going to talk about the bravery of the men and women that courageously save lives as part of the fire department we're going to talk about the organization above the fire department here meals on wheels and the saving lives that they do every day seven days a week by providing meals to many of our senior citizens in in the area so let's go in and talk to the folks from meals on wheels with peter stone chip i richard roberts were inside at meals on wheels of peter's township talking to the director susan hanna won't susan tell us a little bit about the program here well we're forty years old we've been in the township for forty years since november  we started in st david's church and on east mcmurry road but we have been in this beautiful facility for seven years we're located above the fire department in the old social hall which we remodeled eight years ago and moved in seven years ago it's a beautiful place now to tell me how many meals do you do here a day we do up to about two hundred meals a day that's a big change from when we started with sixteen meals forty years ago we serve senior citizens primarily but also some people with special needs or the anyone who has difficulty shopping or cooking a healthy meal our goal is to keep people in their homes as long as possible by feeding a very healthy nutritious hot meal to them every monday through friday now at two hundred meals a day what is that what does it look like for you here in twenty fourteen last year we serve forty five thousand eight hundred seventy meals at is a lot of meals we do extend beyond our boundaries of peter's township we now serve the surrounding community says well ok and how many folks does this employ and also the volunteers we do have a paid cooking staff of four people and a program assistant and a cleaning crew  i'm a volunteer and then so are all these people behind me you will see and talk to later who are preparing the meals and packaging them and getting in then we have a whole nother crew that comes in to drive so we have twelve routes so we have about twenty four drivers every day that usually go in pairs so we probably have two hundred fifty to three hundred volunteers from the community who help us with this  like over the course of a month we would have that number some people drive every other week so a different crew would be on this week and then next week the driver might be different but i would say probably about two hundred fifty to three hundred people volunteer every every month say ok lots of activity going on behind us let's go back in and see what they're doing ok well one other thing i wanted to tell you is that a lot of our seniors have some special needs for example if they have renal disease or diabetes or some other celiac disease so they can't have gluten so one of the unusual features of our kitchen is that we make meals to serve all of those special needs we customize our meals for them that's fantastic susan let's go back and see the assembly line that's going on ok well right now you're seeing the assembly line of the bag part of our meal some of our clients just get a hot meal but they also get with it salad dessert soup and milk so everybody gets a bag but some people who pay a little bit more also get a sandwich juice and a cookie so essentially they get two meals a hot meal a hot meal which you'll see in a minute and then some of the things that are being on top of it and it's baked and we're also having parsley potatoes and broccoli in the hot meal here we cook everything right here that we cook from scratch most of the let's can we talk to one of the folks here ok hi we're talking about meals on wheels and you're one of the volunteers yes i am davis there lynn just exactly what part of the and count everything out so that all the meals come out right correct so everyone gets their meals ok and darlene shares the job with carol shade that is really important to get the numbers all correct and there's twelve routes ok all right can give a look at when and the other down down the other way the line how's that we're in the cold line here at meals on wheels or peter's township just talking to some of the assembly folks here karalee and and this is all made right here to susan right ok great fruit that tracks farm donates to us and make a fresh fruit salad that's good to know certain that's th a fresh fruit from tracks farm how about here i'm facking juice cranberry juice and milk ok all right and this is the beginning of the line right here volunteers and one day and they have made all the all the desserts and the fruit salad and and made the cole slaw to start with and now they're just bagging it you mention tracks farms are there any other organizations in the area that donate food yes trax is a wonderful donor of their leftovers every monday we greatly appreciate that panera bread heisler is market and also donate to us regularly heisler twice a week they've been terrific at helping us with the certs so that we don't have to spend money to purchase desserts what would be an average cost of a meal susan well there's a difference between the costs that we charge the client and the cost of making the meal we charge the clients four dollars or four sixty depending on whether they're getting the plane meal or the one with the sandwich juice and cookie that covers about half the cost of the food and our operation that we estimate a meal in fact with all of our costs including rent costs about between eight and nine dollars we are struggling a little bit with our budget these days and we will be looking to the community to help us with some donations in the future but kind of opens a door first right now that what kind of what kind of participation can the viewers have out there at peters township well we're hoping to set up what we might call a sponsorship program where you could help donate you could help pay for the cost of the food and supplies by being a sponsor of of our operation we're not going to actually choose one person for you to sponsor because that would be a little complicated but what we would like to do is develop sponsors who are willing to donate  perhaps one year perhaps every year a certain amount whatever they feel comfortable giving to make sure our program can continue to serve seniors and keep them in their homes is that another program hasn't been initiated yet not yet we're just getting organized on and you can keep us informed on how we can i will absolutely that's great can we get back and look in the kitchen part there ok all right great i would trying some of this delicious hot peppers hot pepper plans the menus and helps cook as well as supervise the other cooks so she's responsible for that where did you get this recipe yet is it from your folks know we do our own pretty much our own recipes here so we start from a frozen base with the soup and then we know is that a daily staple it is every single day yes ok oh wonderful well what are some of the variet variety of soups and you start five o'clock every morning yes five o'clock every morning what happens on the weekends here i mean how do the how to clients get good food on the weekends we have clients who need mills on the weekend not too many probably about eight or ten right now in so throughout the week when we have extra food we make frozen meals and then we use those frozen meals to send to the clients who need food for the weekend all right wonderful night i heard something about blizzard bags at one time big you want to speak about them i'm sure usually it's a girl scout troop or church will poor bring in stuff in they'll pull together bags for us that we call blizzard bags and usually they have soup in hot chocolate or t v maybe a putting pack or fruit pack crackers things of that nature that are our shelf stable and then we send them to the clients at the beginning of the winter season and if we cancel they at least have a mill that they can prepare for themselves for that day that's fantastic now do you for the special holidays like christmas thanksgiving you do special meals for that oh yes we do so christmas we usually do  chicken or turkey or him sometimes and then east this past easter we did a turkey dinner thanksgiving of course we do the turkey dinner so oh in st pa my job at my house yeah i get to do that so i honor you guys very much this is a for the local community channel and we're just given some information about meals on wheels we thank you for your work here a you enjoyed it enjoyed very much it's not a real good job being back here doing dishes but you're working with good people for a worthy cause and it's just a pleasant way to spend time away from the house you know along been doing this for about two here at meals on wheels of peter's township talking to susan and all the qualified staff and volunteers so when they first moved into this place now eight years ago it was just an empty shell from what i understand yes this was the social hall for the fire department it was a big empty room white with no windows or any accoutrements so we did have a big expense to make it into a kitchen one of our biggest supporters all along has been the center mark foundation center mark is a roofing company in south point and we are very grateful to them for their incredible help first of all and renovating it and to make make it  room with these beautiful coral walls and very lovely floor easy to clean and so on and we always get one hundred percent on our inspections from the food safety people so we're grateful for that support  we started here with about one hundred clients in this facility and we're now at about two hundred a day or sometimes a little more we do hope to continue to grow to support the need there our population is getting older and i think the need is great we only touch a small fraction of the people who could use our help we encourage people to call us if they have a neighbor who needs help or someone in their family could use help  it's a very modest fee we charge either twenty or twenty three dollars a week for and you saw how healthy the food was so we hope to be with you for a long time so they got a taste some of this food and it's incredible  now if you had any volunteers if you had anyone i want to get in touch with you at all what would be a phone number that they could get in touch with meals on wheels repeaters township seven to four nine six nine one thousand we also have a web site just google meals on wheels of peters township and you can get to it so you can also look at our operation there we have our menus on the website and you can e mail us through that thank you susan just a great organization that feeds over two hundred people in the  area has about two hundred fifty volunteers that make this happen in a month's time and we didn't even know it even existed very quiet organization will help to kind of get the word out there get some more volunteers and some more funding and keep the great work going on thank you very much thanks for coming this is richard roberts and it's good to be with you this morning