Drive-thru Meal-service
The Walla Walla Senior Center
A Short History
The year is 2020. A pandemic has struck the world, uprooting virtually every element of life as we know it. The Walla Walla Senior Center in Walla Walla, WA, decides to open a drive-thru line so that it can continue to feed older adults who lack access to healthy food. In an instant, the line begins to weave down the street and around the block. Trays of food are being stacked higher than ever before. “We need more mashed potatoes!!” yells the chef. And day after day the line grows longer and the food more in demand.
That story is a true story, and it brings us to today. Emergency funding that provided meals is coming to an end, but our drive-thru line is still very much in need of our services. And that’s where you come in. We learned through this experience that there is a large population of older adults in need of food assistance but prefer to not enter into our center. Either they have mobility or health issues, need to get back home to care for a loved one, or a multitude of other reasons.
This is why it’s so important that we can keep the drive-thru service open even as we lose our previous funding source. We went from serving 47,600 meals in 2019, to 89,432 in 2020, and 115,807 in 2021. We are still serving thousands of meals a month.
Can you help save the drive-thru meal-service? If you’re able, we would love it if you could make a donation to help us achieve our mission and keep our drive-thru meal-service open for those that have come to rely on it.
