Neighborly Senior Care Network\u2019s<\/a> Meals on Wheels in Pinellas County has a waitlist that it\u2019s looking to shrink.\u00a0<\/p>\nTo help accomplish that, they are requesting additional state funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the delivery bags loaded with food, volunteers are ready to feed hungry seniors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do it because it’s something that I feel like you should be doing to give back to the community,\u201d said Tom Henkel, a volunteer.<\/p>\n
Henkel has been volunteering with Neighborly Senior Care Network\u2019s Meals on Wheels for more than five years, and he goes the extra mile.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody gets a banana on Tuesdays. They all look forward to it,\u201d Henkel said.<\/p>\n
While the number of people he delivers to has fluctuated over the years, Henkel said the need is great.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of folks who this is the only meal they get all day and how important it is for them to receive a meal that’s nutritionally balanced like these meals are,\u201d Henkel said.<\/p>\n
Neighborly\u00a0now\u00a0serves\u00a0500,000+ meals every year. Last year’s total was a more than 30,000 increase from the number of meals provided in 2023.<\/p>\n
James White has been using Meals on Wheels for over a year. He said it\u2019s a great financial help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m disabled, so I don’t have to go out as much. I don’t have to do all the walking through the store and plus food today, it’s just real expensive,\u201d said James White.<\/p>\n
Most of Neighborly\u2019s clients are served through\u00a0approximately\u00a0$2.5 million in federal funding, but the nonprofit said that money is always uncertain. State funding helped\u00a0in\u00a0the last two fiscal years.\u00a0The\u00a0$750,000 from\u00a0last year\u2019s\u00a0Florida\u2019s budget, Neighborly said, helped get hundreds of people off its waitlist.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we’re lucky that it’s, it’s all-time low, about 600 people because of the state appropriation that we’ve received recently,\u201d said Anita Cihlar, nutrition director, Neighborly Care Network.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit is requesting $1 million in funding in the 2026-27 state budget. Cihlar said the funding will\u00a0prevent\u00a0seniors from\u00a0returning to\u00a0the waitlist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to just keep those people fed \u2014 it’s about almost 800 people. That’s a lot of seniors that could go without meals and go back on the waitlist if we didn’t get the funding again,\u201d Cihlar said.<\/p>\n
Henkel, who sees the impact\u00a0firsthand, said the money would help many seniors in the county that he enjoys serving every week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would highly recommend that if anybody is interested in volunteering, that they look up their local Meals on Wheels program and see how they can go about doing so,\u201d Henkel said.<\/p>\n
The Older Americans Act, which provides about $2.5 million to Neighborly\u2019s nutrition program, expired in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A reauthorization act<\/a> was introduced in June 2025. It has had no movement through Congress yet.<\/p>\nNeighborly said their OAA funding has remained steady even without its reauthorization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Feeding America data shows that the number of food-insecure seniors is rising.\u00a0 Based on its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,1374,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-153775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-pinellas-county","11":"tag-st-pete","12":"tag-st-pete-headlines","13":"tag-st-pete-news","14":"tag-st-petersburg","15":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","16":"tag-st-petersburg-news","17":"tag-tampa","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-tyler-oneill","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}