Meals on Wheels Yolo County keeps seniors nourished and thriving
by Anne Stokes
Food is a love language: Holidays, birthdays and reunions are celebrated with feasts and family traditions are often passed down in the kitchen. The power of a meal and a friendly face can be significant, especially for isolated seniors who have difficulty grocery shopping and cooking for themselves.
Since the 1970s, Meals on Wheels Yolo County (MOW Yolo) has been supporting such vulnerable seniors. What started in the kitchen of St. John’s United Church of Christ in Woodland has grown into a professional operation capable of nourishing thousands of seniors across Yolo County and beyond. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, MOW Yolo continues to provide meals and much more.
“Meals on Wheels Yolo County’s mission is to nourish and engage seniors in Yolo County, and we do that with a vision in which all seniors live nourished lives with independence, resilience and dignity,” says Joy Cohan, executive director of MOW Yolo. “It started with being rooted in community, and it’s stayed that way all of these years as the organization grew and became an official nonprofit.”
“We started to be more purposeful and visionary about what we can do, better understanding of the needs that are out there, and trying to elevate ourselves to match those needs. The status quo just didn’t cut it anymore.”
Joy Cohan, Executive Director, Meals on Wheels Yolo County
MOW Yolo’s programs offer opportunities to socialize as well as stay healthy. According to a 2023 study by the Office of the US Surgeon General, loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of premature death up to 29% and costs an estimated $6.7 billion in Medicare spending on hospital and nursing facilities.
“For all kinds of reasons, people tend to get more isolated as they age,” Cohan explains. “Family members may live far away, children and grandchildren have moved away. People start to move away or pass away and it’s just harder, mobility-wise, to get out and meet new people.”
When Cohan came to MOW Yolo in 2022, the program served just 380 seniors. Today, they serve five meals a week to 1,200 seniors, a 300% increase. Funding for such work relies on multiple sources: 15% of its annual budget comes from the federal Older Americans Act and the remainder from private philanthropy and social enterprise ventures. The institutional meal production facility makes the latter possible, fulfilling meal orders for other nonprofit organizations, such as adult day programs in Yolo County, a hospice in Sacramento County, and MOW organizations and other similar senior nutrition programs in Butte, Colusa, Sutter and Yuba counties.
“We started to be more purposeful and visionary about what we can do, better understanding of the needs that are out there, and trying to elevate ourselves to match those needs,” Cohan says. “The status quo just didn’t cut it anymore.”
In addition to home delivered meals, MOW Yolo operates five Cafe Yolo Social Dining locations weekly throughout the county, as well as Cafe Yolo To-Go, where seniors can pick up meals monthly. The Weekend Food Project provides shelf-stable meals twice monthly for 300 low-income seniors and the MOW PAWS – Pets and Well Seniors program provides pet food and supplies. But unfortunately, there is a 225-person, months-long wait list, something Cohan says didn’t exist a year ago, before pandemic-era American Rescue Plan funding expired in 2024.
“We’re fighting the good fight right now to not cut seniors off of the program, and we had to find ever more clever ways to keep doing what we’re doing, but somehow do it in a less fiscally burdensome way,” Cohan says. “I think this community in our little county really feels like this is our Meals on Wheels. It’s important, it’s part of how we take care of our elders.”
For more information on how Meals on Wheels Yolo County can help you—or how you can help MOW Yolo—visit www.mowyolo.org or call 530-662-7035.
