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Healthy Aging By Sharon Johnson Meals program needs helpers "Listen. Listen closely. Your elderly neighbors are calling to you. They need food � and friends." This is the beckoning message of a local program that needs volunteers. Frankly, it needs a lot of them. Every day, the Food and Friends program operated by Senior and Disabled Services and the Rogue Valley Council of Governments provides a noon meal to area seniors, many of them place-bound and financially needy. These meals amount to more than 16,000 a month. I always knew that home-delivered meals were available, but I never realized that their provision was so significant to the people receiving the meals. I went out with a volunteer driver on one of the routes recently. It was an eye-opening couple of hours, sobering at times. Tucked away in little homes all over the countryside are aging people whose medication costs have reduced their food budgets to almost nothing or whose physical disabilities make the preparation of a simple meal out of the question. One of the Food and Friends volunteers, Erma Boothby, spends about an hour and a half every Monday delivering meals and providing words of support and encouragement. Erma is a remarkable volunteer, but I am told all the volunteers are pretty remarkable. She is a retired nurse who joined the Peace Corps at the age of 67. Currently, she is a deacon in her church, does regular blood-pressure screenings in her neighborhood and volunteers in the schools every Tuesday. And every Monday at midday, Erma is on her appointed rounds with Food and Friends, bringing what is sometimes the only meal of their day to elderly individuals in our community. Eileen Davis, the capable site manager at the Jacksonville Senior Center where meals are packaged, has wonderful things to say about Erma � and about all her volunteers. At every site throughout the two counties (and there are 15 of them), these volunteers demonstrate commitment, caring and competence. Problem is, the volunteers are in short supply. If you are reading these words and are tempted to volunteer, I am about to make a bold attempt to persuade you to do just that. In doing so, I won�t raise the issue of malnutrition in the elderly (another column, another time). I won�t give you one of the many examples of the critical importance of social connectedness to your quality of life as you age. But I will remind you that volunteering can be as good for you as it is for the recipients of these meals. A September 1999 survey (Hart and Associates) looked at the "New Face of Retirement" and found that we are living decades longer than we did in 1900 and that we are volunteering more. The Hart survey did not make any tie between those two findings (wish they had), but it did find that 74 percent of the retirees who were surveyed volunteered in some form. Fifty-one percent of the people surveyed said they did so because they felt "an obligation to give back," and 48 percent said they "wanted to make a difference." Becoming a Food and Friends volunteer allows you to do both. Please make the call: 664-6674 or 955-8839. Thank you. Sharon Johnson is an assistant professor in family and community development at OSU Extension and a member of the Senior Advisory Council. Reach her at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.