Many people have heard of Meals on Wheels — delivery of free hot lunches to homebound seniors — but they may not realize how vital the decades-old program can be, say workers with Silver Key Senior Services, the Colorado Springs area administrator of the program.

“The community depends on it,” said Miciah Worthwealth, who drove Meals on Wheels boxes to clients’ houses for 10 years.

For the past eight years, he’s been transporting food from Silver Key’s headquarters to 13 noontime dining sites the organization operates from Monument to Fountain to Woodland Park.

“I believe without Silver Key, people would actually go hungry,” Worthwealth said.

COVID-19 brought a spike in need for Meals on Wheels that hasn’t let up,

said Jason Deabueno, president and CEO of Silver Key Senior Services.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, demand for home-delivered meals has jumped by 71%, he said.

“During COVID, more people qualified for services because they were homebound, so we increased significantly,” Deabueno said.

Requests for meal delivery post-pandemic continue to grow — showing an increase of 7% in 2022 — because many seniors have lingering health problems from COVID and “food is medicine,” he said.

Eating healthy meals helps seniors maintain independence and ward off disease, Deabueno said.

A strong volunteer force that bucked the trend and added more to its ranks during COVID has allowed Silver Key to keep up with client growth, he said.

The idea of delivered meals is said to have originated in the United Kingdom during World War II, when people lost the ability to cook.

The first American home-delivered meal program began in 1954 in Philadelphia as a social movement that now helps 2.4 million American seniors each year nationwide.

In the Pikes Peak region, Meals on Wheels originated as a companionship program by volunteers who wanted to help isolated tuberculosis patients in the first half of the 1900s, Deabueno said.

Companionship remains a key part of Silver Key, which started in 1970, he said.

Meals on Wheels today enables staff and volunteers to interact with clients, who are often socially isolated, and assess and assist with their needs beyond nutrition, Carvell said.

Ron Parker, 64, also thinks it’s a needed lifeline, which every March marks the anniversary of President Richard Nixon signing into law an amendment of the Older Americans Act of 1965 to include a national nutrition program for seniors ages 60 and older.

Parker divides his time eating at one of Silver Key’s Connections Cafés with congregate dining or a local Salvation Army community dining room.

The retired truck driver didn’t make his own meals before, and he doesn’t plan on starting now.

“That’s one habit I could never get into, cooking for myself,” he said. “I really do like the meals here — the food is great and very nutritious.”

Parker also volunteers in the Silver Key kitchen, where on Tuesday he was filling sacks with fruit and juice to accompany a freshly made and individually plated entrée of pork chow mein with stir-fried vegetables and rice.

A handful of volunteers start preparing the day’s 400 or so meals at 5 a.m., said Cindy Carvell, director of community-based services for Silver Key.

During the height of the pandemic, 600 to 700 meals were going out the door every weekday, she said.

Half of the meals are earmarked for Meals on Wheels, which are delivered free to seniors ages 60 and above who are homebound.

The other half supply the organization’s cafes, which are offered at a suggested donation of $3.50 per meal.

By 7 a.m., an assembly line in the commercial kitchen feeds the day’s offering through a new automated system. The process helps efficiently fill and seal individual plates that are identically portioned and nutritionally balanced, Carvell said.

Nearly 80 regular drivers and 30 substitutes deliver the meals, either to homes or the organization’s cafes. The prepackaged plates are transported in heated boxes in trucks with plug-ins that maintain the temperature of the food at 140 degrees, Carvell said.

Before COVID, volunteers would hand-serve prepared food at the cafes.

Most of the organization’s meals’ program is paid for with state and local funding, Carvell added, and some food is donated through Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado.

Prominent community leaders are volunteering this week to help prepare food for Meals on Wheels, including Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, who will participate on Wednesday.

The monthlong annual March for Meals observance by the national Meals on Wheels America highlights seniors’ need for community assistance, Deabueno said.

“It gives visibility to the importance of volunteering and connecting with the older adult community that may not have resources through their families or in the community otherwise,” he said.