By Natalie Maruschak

One Good Meal is one of thirteen nonprofits in Lee’s Summit that received funding in 2018 from The Greater Lee’s Summit Healthcare Foundation. The $7,500 grant is helping fund ongoing meal delivery services to home-bound residents across the city.

One Good Meal volunteers packing lunches for the elderly and homebound in Lee’s Summit and Greenwood #HealthyLeesSummit

Roberta MacArthur, the executive director of One Good Meal, has created a network of more than 100 volunteers that help prepare, assemble and deliver meals. She says they are always in need of more helping hands, especially drivers. They successfully deliver meals to 130 home-bound seniors daily. With 55 drivers taking on 11 routes a week, One Good Meal is able to provide a well-balanced meal to the community’s seniors every day.

Deliveries are made from one beautiful border of Lee’s Summit to the other and extend all the way into Greenwood. These delivery visits are so important to the recipients because in addition to nutritious meals, the delivery drivers combat the loneliness that often can be a part of the home-bound lifestyle.

By providing a larger midday meal, recipients are able to have food to take with their medication. In the colder fall and winter months, an extra emergency meal is delivered in case drivers cannot reach homes in inclement weather. “These are the people who helped Lee’s Summit to become as cool as it is now,” MacArthur says lovingly of their clients. “We can’t forget them.”

MacArthur says that she and the volunteers are very humbled by the fact that One Good Meal received this grant. “There are so many good charities in Lee’s Summit taking care of folks,” MacArthur says. “The fact that the Greater Lee’s Summit Healthcare Foundation believes One Good Meal is that important humbles me!”

The grant award helps One Good Meal continue to have the privilege of not refusing service to someone in need regardless of an individual’s ability to help pay.

The Greater Lee’s Summit Healthcare Foundation annually provides grants to health-focused nonprofits within Lee’s Summit. Visit www.HealthyLeesSummit.org for more information and access to a grant application. All applications are due by October 31st of each year.

Natalie Maruschak is a senior at Summit Christian Academy

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