St. Vincent Meals on Wheels Rises to Serve Hundreds of New Clients
Schultz & Williams has been proud to serve St. Vincent Meals on Wheels in Los Angeles for 32 years.
Over those years, St. Vincent has risen to meet the needs of homebound seniors across Los Angeles through earthquakes, riots and fires. But the COVID-19 crisis has hit L.A.’s homebound seniors hard.
In mid-March, health officials closed all L.A. senior centers that serve meals and asked seniors to stay home. Since then, over 1,500 new seniors have asked St. Vincent for meal delivery, and hundreds more are expected as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds.
Many of the seniors who ask for meals are over 80 years old, have poor health and can’t get food any other way. They are worried and alone, and they rely on St. Vincent for a lifeline of meals and wellness checks.
The response by St. Vincent’s staff and volunteers has been heroic. They take every precaution to keep shut-in seniors nourished and safe with distanced wellness checks—even as the client list rises to 2,850, and counting.
Health guidelines require St. Vincent to visit seniors less, so they bring each senior a hot meal, along with frozen meals for the days in between. They urgently need funding to make thousands more meals and serve every senior in need.
Thankfully, St. Vincent’s family of donors are heroic too. An emergency campaign to raise money for food and equipment for their rapid expansion raised over $1.7 million between March 1 and June 1.
This quick-response fundraising enabled the program to quickly double the amount of meals they serve, from 10,000 a week to 20,000 a week.
We salute the dedicated staff and volunteers of St. Vincent Meals on Wheels who are on the front lines to ensure that our most vulnerable neighbors get the food and love they deserve.
