A new “satellite food pantry” effort is bringing services of the Gilmer Community Food Pantry to the county’s senior center in downtown Ellijay.
The first delivery of food to the Gilmer Senior Center was made last week, confirmed Allen Triebel, the food pantry’s director.
“We delivered over 600 pounds (last week) and will deliver the first Tuesday of the month or as they need it. We will store the rest for them,” Triebel said.
Vicky Stonecipher, senior center director, said the food is given to seniors who are registered for the center’s meal program. Those meals are now being distributed via drive-through pick up and the traveling Meals on Wheels program.
“Our congregate meal pickup is done as a drive-thru. We give them a bag of food when they come to pick up their meals. The rest, we will send to our homebound (seniors). We have 44 homebound seniors and about 15 on average who pick up (meals) every other week,” Stonecipher said.
Triebel said the new program was made possible by a $2,000 grant the pantry recently received to assist seniors. He said Gilmer Family Connection helped the pantry to obtain that grant. He also credited the food pantry’s warehouse manager, Tim Prater, with the idea to deliver food to the senior center.
“We’ve already spent the grant money and bought 3,000-plus pounds of food,” he said. “Since COVID, many seniors have been unable to get to us. We plan to make (this) an ongoing program, which will continue as long as they want it to. That’s what the food pantry is all about. It’s our mission.”
The senior center normally provides its congregate meals inside the facility along with various group activities for seniors, but that hasn’t been the case during the pandemic.
“We’re definitely hoping to reopen, we just don’t know when,” Stonecipher said.
Seniors have to be registered with the meal program to receive the bagged food, but new members are being accepted, she added.
“They can’t come inside, so we would have to get their information over the phone or meet them outside,” Stonecipher noted.
For more details on the Gilmer Senior Center’s meal programs, call 706-635-7688.