Dear Friends and Partners,
This is the August 2nd update of
Wright County’s Care and Nutrition Partnership Support for Seniors (60+).
We are starting our 20th
week of response to COVID-19. Wright County Community Action (WCCA) has a
support line for seniors; please encourage seniors to call (320) 963-6500 Ext. 274. As a community, we want to help with
our most vulnerable neighbors’ challenges, including isolation and the impact
that results, assistance with grocery access through education, grocery delivery,
senior mobile food shelf needs, frozen meal support, prescription access, and
needs like housekeeping, chores, and other logistical issues as they present.
Wright County COVID-19 IMPACT
As of July 30th we have 760 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in
Wright County. This measurement began
March 13th of this year. 96 new confirmed cases since last
week up from 88 or an average of 13 new cases a day. Cases over 70 years of age continue to fall
as a percentage of all cases confirmed from 8.58% reported last week to 8.03% this week. J
Week of 7-30-20 Wright County Minnesota Coronavirus Confirmed
Cases
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/52d559cfbe6e4ca39558c9b2f877e144
If
you haven’t talked to your senior family member or friend lately, please give
them a call to see how they are – let them hear from you!
Shout-out to Strategic Partners: Waverly Café and WCCA
employees
Extraordinary times like this pandemic
require extraordinary measures to be taken, revealing extraordinary individuals
and partners. Here are just a few of the
selfless heroes looking past their individual convenience with courage, staying
power, commitment, and self-sacrifice to insure that our vulnerable seniors have
the nutrition and care they need.
Waverly Café, under the leadership and giving
spirit of owner Sarah Larson, this week passed the 20,000 meals produced mark. What a tremendous impact from a local partner
making a huge difference in the safety of our local seniors. It is so good to
see these young people from Waverly Café
working so hard to make a difference.
Head
Start pulling their weight big time!
Wright
County Community Action Head Start staff have also
played a critical role from the beginning by simultaneously making our Wright
County Senior Care and Nutrition Partnership come together while at the same
time still providing high-quality services to our Head Start children and
families as the pandemic progressed. Made possible early on with the cooperation
and leadership of the Head Start Director, Rebecca Rydbom, quite a few WCCA
Head Start staff have trained and stayed on this summer to support many
different areas of service, including senior curbside services as a safe
approach to using the Wright County Food Shelf.
Head Start staff have been instrumental in packing and delivering
Senior Mobile Food Shelf packages and frozen meals as requested to the homes of
county seniors.
Additional Head Start staff (not
pictured) have been willing to use some of their regular summer off to
support this project, forming a homebased call center that offers Health and
Reassurance calls to support grocery shopping education, Care and Nutrition
application support, and follow up contact for other assistance including our
Frozen Meal program. In July this team
connected on 1,594 calls averaging just over 7 minutes per call. These home based workers are connecting with over
1,300 vulnerable seniors to give them the reassurance they need and just a
little tender loving care and conversation.
“With
the help of dedicated Head Start staff, older residents of Wright County have
connected with WCCA in a way that not only offers support for food security but
that has provided social interaction that has led to many referrals to other
services, allowing WCCA to be a strong supporter during the pandemic. Thank you
to all of the Head Start staff for bringing your social skills and supportive
conversation to so many aging adults. Your work has been instrumental in
connecting with and establishing a relationship with individuals who really
benefit from WCCA support.”
Eric
Nagel – WCCA Director of Aging Services
In addition to the senior call center, Head Start staff have cheerfully
helped the partnership pack over 40,000 Senior
Frozen Meals, distributed since late March.
We can be very proud of all those Head Start staff who stayed in there
and helped this Partnership be successful at a critical time.
Our Head Start staff are tough and have moved
a lot of boxes. These are just a few of
the champions taking some of their usual summer off to support our seniors and
this Partnership.
Untiedt’s Vegetable Distribution
This week Untiedt’s Vegetable Farm is sharing 50 cases of cucumbers, 50 cases
of green peppers, 25 cases of yellow zucchini, and 50 bags of sweet corn. Please let us know if there are other food security partners that
we are not reaching with these vegetables.
Please
forward this email to them.
If you or a potential partner would like to
help expand this resource to our seniors expressly on Highway 12, please
consider donating to the “COVID-19
Food” fund at the Delano Loretto Area United Way:
Write a check to: Delano Loretto Area United Way
In the memo line, write: “COVID-19 Food.”
Mail
to: P.O. Box 578
Delano, MN 55328
Or visit the Delano Loretto Area United Way
Website http://www.delanolorettouw.org/ and click “Donate” -- donations via credit card or PayPal (click on “write a note”, write “COVID-19 Food”)
If you want to target expansion of frozen
meal delivery in other parts of Wright County including the Highway 55 corridor
and I-94 corridor, please consider donating to the “COVID-19 Food” fund at Wright County Community
Action:
Write a check to: Wright County Community Action
In the memo line, write: “COVID-19 Food.”
Mail
to: P.O. Box 787
Maple Lake, MN 55358
Or visit the Wright County Community Action
Agency Website (dedicate to: “COVID-19
Food”) https://www.wccaweb.com
The entire community of Wright County is in
this together! (see current partner list
below)
Thrilled,
Jay Weatherford
WCCA Executive Director
For more information for Wright County senior
support services:
or
or
call:
(320) 963-6500 Ext
274 –
Aging Program Manager - Eric Nagel
(320) 963-6500 Ext 241 – Dispatch
1-800-333-2433 – Senior LinkAge Line
Delivered
Frozen Meal Program(s) – WCCA at (320) 963-6500 Ext
274
or Catholic Charities Meals on Wheels program located in
Maple Lake: (320) 963-5771,
Annandale: (320) 274-3891
and Buffalo: (763) 682-6036
To volunteer:
Contact (320) 963-6500 Ext. 225 –– Jen Liebeck jliebeck@wccaweb.com
New
Partner and First Time Reader Overview
Farmers: food shelfs and senior programs can
use your support. Please share this
email with your Wright County farmer
friends potentially able to contribute, or other Food Security Partners that
could use this produce to support their efforts. For large donations, WCCA will use its
resources to make distributions happen. Again,
going forward we hope to expand this list of local food security recipients
that could use fresh vegetables when they become available. If you are serving
local individuals at no cost and would like to be included in this potential
fresh vegetable distribution opportunity, please email me a cell phone number
to text. When an opportunity arises, a
rapid response will be needed. Based on
a first come first serve distribution and availability, Wright County Community
Action will do our best to share these resources as they come in and deliver
them to partner locations.
Partner support
·
Second Harvest – free and reduced cost bulk raw food
products for frozen meal production.
·
Local Farmers – Untiedt’s Vegetable Farm – contributing
produce for senior meal support and local food security needs.
·
Waverly Café - ingenuity and giving spirit including
their PPP loan directed at paying their staff to produce senior meals, catering
expertise, and use of their commercial kitchen.
·
Catholic Charities partially funded by Central MN Council
on Aging – frozen meals contribution and Meals-on-Wheels referral partner.
·
Cargill – breakfast meals.
·
J&B Group – bulk warehouse freezer storage including
bulk prepared meal storage and bulk raw food storage; not to mention helping us
resolve logistical issues, as well as supplying a really great box with the
outcome of providing so many solutions to challenges we have faced in our
production process.
·
Buffalo Crossings LLC, owner of Oriental Buffet in
Buffalo – commercial walk-in freezer, commercial walk-in cooler, and commercial
kitchen to pack and store senior meals.
·
Local Food Shelves - local frozen meal and bulk food
storage, as well as senior services registration (Annandale Food Shelf, Buffalo
Food Shelf, Monticello Help Center, and Waverly Food Shelf).
·
Trailblazer – daily volunteer based County-wide local
meal delivery.
·
Delano Senior Center – senior services application
fulfillment and frozen meal distribution, as well as Meals-on-Wheels referral
partner.
·
Wright County Human Services/Public Health – volunteer
recruitment support, data support, instructional materials design, and
logistics support.
·
St. Cloud Refrigeration – emergency air conditioning for
the Waverly Café kitchen.
·
Local Lions Clubs – local community freezer development
and contributions to the cost of frozen meals (Waverly, Montrose, Howard Lake,
Maple Lake, Loretto, and Monticello).
·
Local Municipalities – local freezer storage funding
support (City of Waverly, City of Montrose, City of Howard Lake).
·
Health Care Partners – Allina Health (financial support)
·
Other Local Corporations – Citizen State Bank of Waverly
(freezer funding support) and Walgreens (shopping bags).
·
Local Faith-based organizations – many very giving
churches for many years have been active in financial support for food security
across Wright County (too many to mention them all – but you know who you are)
. – in addition, Love INC, St Mary’s Catholic Church, Alleluia Lutheran, Our
Father’s Lutheran, St. John’s Lutheran, North Ridge Fellowship Small Group and
friends, Montrose United Methodist Church have provide support for senior call
center activity, B.R.E.A.D program outreach, volunteer administrative services,
food security, food preparation, and meal and food storage - access and
delivery.
·
Initiative Foundations, Delano Loretto Area United Way,
Wright County Area United Way, Mardag Foundation, and St Paul and Minnesota
Foundations including funding for COVID-19 direct response, Catchafire membership,
and B.R.E.A.D. program funding.
·
State Live Well at Home Funding and Federal Title III
funding support administered by the Minnesota Board on Aging and Central
Minnesota Council on Aging.
·
Wholesale purchase of recyclable meal trays.
·
Oliver Equipment Lease for the required equipment to seal
the senior meal trays.
·
AMI Group and IDA Foods – access to airline meal vendors
adding senior meal production capacity and contingency support. This opportunity to purchase over stock of
first-class airline meals due to drop in air travel and our partners sharing
their relationships.
·
Tireless WCCA Staff support from multiple programs
working to braid any allowable resource to make a difference for our seniors.
·
Countless community volunteers - everything from administrative
services support, logistics and storage coordination, bulk food and materials
transport, senior transportation, local meal delivery, meal packing, senior
call center activity, PPE production and product support, volunteer
coordination, food rescue, and so many more details where you fill the gap (you too, know who you are – we are so
grateful for your courage and willingness to step forward to meet needs).
Call to Action
There is still much more opportunity for
local corporate and civic partners to get involved. It’s simple solutions like packing meals in
the Walgreens shopping bags or storing bulk meals or protein on the warehouse
freezer floor at J&B Group that have made all the difference. Given the chance there are many incredible
businesses that have unique resources, relationships, buying power, and
experience. We really hope to find more
corporate partners willing to leverage their earned knowledge and distinctive
talents to improve this support for our seniors during the pandemic. Leveraging what they do best including their
marketing, buying power, and connections brings together powerful
partners. When we put our heads
together, we dig up unique ways like those mentioned briefly above. These often come from you readers. So please share this email with your friend,
neighbor, or corporate partner so
that this story can be told, and those big thinkers out there have the
opportunity to step forward and do what they do best.
Its leaders like Waverly Café, J&B Group,
Cargill, St. Cloud Refrigeration, Buffalo Crossing, and Untiedt Vegetable Farm
that are showing us ways for other corporate partners to leverage their buying
power, innovation, and economy of scale that will most likely take this
delivery system to the next level. We
need you thinkers to help refine our process as a community, interested in
protecting our most vulnerable population by leveraging their lessons learned;
those lessons that have brought your businesses to the success they are today. Share this message with your friends: during
the same years that many of your companies were established and being built to
thrive, the people we are trying to
protect were your customers. This
might be a great opportunity to now give back to the ones who supported you and
help them thrive.
We need to refine solutions in local
communities for freezer storage, access to bulk buying, shared and efficient
transportation opportunities, HR teams organizing volunteers to support local
distribution in their community, corporate giving through community investment
and matching. We need volunteered
ingenuity from our bankers and other corporate partners that can bring their experience to this effort to
shore up and produce a stronger, even more sustainable model than we have
today. It is partners with their buying
power, innovation, and economy of scale that are now needed to continue to
refine our process. There is still local
ingenuity to leverage in this crisis seeking local solutions that will only
enhance, extend, and sustain the investment of the federal and state agencies.
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