Meals & More Feeds Seniors in Time of Need

Meals & More is a much needed and valued service of CICOA. We generally serve over 1,600 seniors a month via our home-delivered meal option and 875 seniors a month via the commodity box program. By the end of March, all of our neighborhood meal sites and hospital/restaurant voucher sites closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Phone calls flooded in from seniors in need of another food option. CICOA Meals & More quickly adjusted our service delivery system to offer the home-delivered meal option to those seniors who could no longer eat at their congregate program. With the help of our Way2Go transportation department and our caterer, Chef for Hire, we have been successfully delivering 14-packs of frozen meals to these clients bi-weekly. We also partnered with the Southport Police Department to provide meals to hungry seniors in their service area.

With the emergency funding received from the Central Indiana Community Emergency Relief Fund (C-CERF), CICOA purchased two transit vehicles. The vans have allowed our drivers to meet the increasing need for the home-delivered meal option. Seniors have the option to receive food within 48 hours from their initial call, which would have not been possible without the vans.

Meals & More continues to impact senior hunger during this pandemic with additional funding received from the Central Indiana Community Emergency Relief Fund, The Central Indiana Senior Fund, Indiana University Health, St. Vincent Health, and the Glick Foundation.

The flexibility in the funding from the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES Act allows CICOA to provide shelf stable meals, weekend meals and nutritional supplements, as well as mini freezers, microwaves and coolers to clients who require these products to receive the home-delivered meal service.