Meals on Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties

Meals on Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties is a community service providing meals in a social or home setting, to assist individuals in remaining healthy, active, and independent of extended care facilities.

Meals on Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties started as a catered company serving 435 seniors per day through satellite nutrition sites in Stark & Wayne counties. In 1997 the agency expanded and opened its own commissary, unique to this area and specifically designed to meet our community’s needs. The menu is planned by our staff dietitian and prepared by staff professionals, meeting and exceeding all nutitional guidelines recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). More than 12 million meals have been prepared and delivered to clients by thousands of community volunteers over the past 44 years. Today, the agency serves more than 1,400 meals daily, Monday through Friday, including home delivered and congregate dining. Volunteers from the community deliver meals throughout the two-county area via 17 distribution sites, covering 65 routes every weekday.

Our agency provides much more than a HOT meal. With over 600 volunteers donating their time every week, we are often a homebound client’s only daily contact, so we try to address any concerns immediately brought to our attention or to the attention of the closest family member or emergency contact. Lives have been saved because of the quick response of dedicated volunteers and staff. We offer PEACE OF MIND, as well as NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT.

As we are now into our 44th year of providing a life-saving service to our community, Meals On Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties’ primary focus is to provide nutritional support to the homebound, elderly, and disabled while keeping an eye on the growing need in our community to do even more. The need to help clients continues to grow, regardless of increased costs or decreases in funding. We are poised on the edge of an exciting future, which includes offering services to those under the age of 60 that are struggling with the recent economic hardships, leaving them homebound and in need of nutritional support, and working more closely with the medical community to support their goals of lowering hospital re-admission rates caused by lack of nutritional support at home. As a successful community-based organization, we continue to seek opportunities designed to help us assist those people in our community with the greatest need, the hidden hungry.