Serving Meals to the Homebound

Deloris Malatesta and Doris Kalbach were sitting in a car one cold Tuesday morning waiting on a few trays of food, a ritual they perform on the second, Tuesday, third Wednesday and fifth Monday of every month.

The two are part of the East Brunswick Department on Aging’s Senior Meals Program, which celebrated its’ 25 anniversary in December.

“We’ve been involved for 25 years, but it’s Middlesex County that provides meals, we just deliver them to the homebound,” said Counselor Jim Dong, who coordinates the program.

Through the program, volunteers pick up prepackaged meals at the Senior Center and bring them to seniors who are homebound. Those people are usually found through referrals and requests and very often, the visit is their only contact with people all day. If recipients aren't home and if they haven't told the Senior Center that whey would be out, volunteers then call the center and emergency contacts are reached.

“We make sure everyone’s OK, because some of them don’t have relatives, and we provide them with some kind of contact," said Dong. 

The East Brunswick Program has served a little over 1,000 people during one month and served in the high 700s in January. To qualify, recipients must live alone, be homebound and over 60 years old.

Malatesta has been a volunteer with the program for 25 years and says delivering food to the homebound is about much more than just providing a meal.

“There was this one little old lady who would come out the back door. She’d blow a kiss and mouth ‘I love you’ and I’d yell back, ‘I love you more,’ ”said Malatesta. “That’s the sad part we’re the only ones they see sometimes.”

If volunteers have trouble getting in touch with the seniors, or if they see anything wrong, they must call the senior center,. After that, emergency contacts are called and if needed, the police department is contacted.

“We kind of report if there is anything going on,” said Kalbach, who began her volunteer career as a substitute one day. “We more or less give them the meal they wouldn’t have gotten.”

Doris, who began volunteering on her birthday one year, said she enjoys volunteering and is glad to be able to help others.

“I just feel like I’m doing something for someone else,” she said, before being interrupted Malatesta, who joked “I dragged her here.” The two laughed like old friends, each knowing they were there for the same reason - to help people.

Malatesta said she started volunteering more than two decades ago after seeing an advertisement in her local church bulletin.

“I read the bulleting article about East Brunswick starting a lunch program and, like everything else, I read it, and then I saw it in again, and then again, and I was arguing with myself, ‘can I do this.’ And I’ve been here ever since,” she said. “We can’t do everything, but we can do something and that was my push.”

If you or someone you know qualifies for the program of if you are looking for volunteer opportunities, call the Department on Aging at 732-390-6896 for more information.