“If someone’s hungry, you go and feed them. It’s just what you do,” says Jeremy Kasman, executive director of the White Plains’ Meals on Wheels (MOW) program. Here in Westchester, there are many MOW and other home delivery meal services for people in need—and considering one in three residents of the county are food insecure, that’s a lot of need. The various MOW programs run independently of each other; the White Plains division alone serves nearly 40,000 meals a year and has the largest volunteer network. Founded in 1979, MOW White Plains has stretched far beyond supplying food under Kasman’s leadership. A passionate community advocate, he has worked tirelessly with the city of White Plains to implement fundraising and awareness campaigns, even showing Mayor Tom Roach the ropes by taking him on a delivery run. Here, we talk to Kasman about how MOW operates and what drives his good works.
How are you funded?
We have three primary sources. The first is a fee for service. If a person can afford to pay for food, they do—it’s $11 per day for two delivered meals. However, I can count on my fingers the number of clients who can afford that. The second source is a $15,000 community development block grant, which is federal money allocated by the City of White Plains, and the third is private donations.
What’s going on today nationally is that the aging population is financially squeezed. While Meals on Wheels is available to anyone who is unable to shop or prepare meals for themselves, regardless of age, the highest demand is for seniors. Programs that rely on donations from the people that they’re delivering meals to are not getting those funds because people can’t afford it. What we’re doing here in White Plains (which does not have a waitlist for services) is using our cash reserves. We’re spending more money than we’re bringing in. If you need to be fed, we’re going to feed you.
Who prepares the meals?
Horizon Food Services in Mamaroneck. The meals are medically appropriate. If someone is diabetic, has a renal diet, or has a food allergy, and the meal offering of the day doesn’t align with their needs, they are served something that they are able to eat. If people have strong preferences, we don’t serve them what they don’t like. We do our best to cater to individual wants and needs. Soft and chopped meals are also available upon request.
There’s one cold and one hot meal served each day, five days a week. Examples of hot entrées include chicken sausage with onions and peppers with a side of hash browns, and meatloaf with gravy, peas, carrots, and mashed potatoes. A cold meal option is a turkey sandwich with coleslaw and peaches. My favorites dishes are the eggplant rollatini and the manicotti. I wouldn’t serve food to people that I would not eat myself.
Do volunteers provide additional support beyond food delivery?
People form relationships, and it really depends on the clients’ needs and wants. Volunteers get to know certain clients—so they can tell, for example, if somebody’s speech is slurred when it normally isn’t. That could be a sign of dehydration or heat exhaustion—or another health issue. We’ve saved lives because the volunteers are alert to those kinds of changes.
“Volunteers get to know certain clients—so they can tell, for example, if somebody’s speech is slurred when it normally isn’t.”
You’re clearly passionate about your work, what keeps you motivated?
It’s how I was raised. When my grandparents came over from Europe 100 years ago, people from the same towns would form associations here to take care of each other. If, for instance, you came out of the hospital and couldn’t shop or cook for yourself, somebody else in that association would send you food. One of the people who did that was my grandmother. One of my father’s earliest memories was getting on the subway carrying jars of chicken soup that my grandmother cooked. I’ve inherited that drive to feed people.
Interested in volunteering or donating? Visit mowwp.org.
Related: Volunteering Together Can Have a Meaningful Impact for Westchester Families
