I interviewed Ms. Charlene Crusoe-Ingram who is the CEO of Meals on Wheels Atlanta (www.mowatl.org)
What does Meals on Wheels Atlanta (MOW Atl) do and how many people do you help?
We provide meals to over 700 seniors. We have hundreds of volunteers and raise 97% of the funds that are needed to run this program ourselves.
What happened that made you start providing pet food to the people who use the MOW Atl program?
Our volunteers were realizing that many seniors were feeding their food to their pets. These animals are often these people’s only companions and mean the world to them. So we established a pet food pantry and volunteers will now take food from the pantry to these pet owners.
What type of food do the seniors in your program get? Where do you get the food that you give to the people and where do you get the pet food? Do you provide more dog or cat food?
The food we give to our seniors is bought with our own funds from commercial food provider, Cysco and cooked in our commercial kitchen. The meals are overseen by a registered dietician for the particular senior’s needs. The pet food is obtained 100% by donations. At the moment we provide more dog food than cat food.
What could I and the community do to help you?
We need to keep the pet food pantry stocked.
How could we get other MOW programs to also provide pet food?
Many MOW programs are County or Government supported. We are not which gives us more freedom to pursue ideas and form different partnerships like the partnership we are hoping to form with the Humane Society of Atlanta that will help with vetting and further helping the pets of our seniors in the program. The focus of the Pet Advisory Council section of MOW America is moving towards providing pet food for seniors in their programs, which is a good step.