This summer, the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutritional Alliance will deliver its 10-millionth meal — and is inviting the people who’ve benefited from its services to share another meal with the agency.
MANNA will host a luncheon for clients from 12:30-2 p.m. June 17 at its headquarters at 23rd and Ranstead streets. Mayor Michael Nutter and Camden Mayor Dana Redd will be on hand for the celebration.
MANNA was founded in 1990 to provide nutritional meals, as well as education, to those struggling with life-threatening illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS.
The agency now delivers 65,000 meals monthly and sometime this summer will deliver its 10-millionth meal.
Executive director Sue Dougherty said the agency tracks its meals through a client database system that manages the delivery and routing of meals to its 875 clients.
Clients receive 21 meals per week and most stay with the program for between six and nine months.
Each client is placed on a meal regimen tailored to his or her illness.
“We serve people with many different illnesses so we try to have diets appropriate for every disease,” Dougherty said, noting that MANNA offers 11 different diets, and clients may be on a combination of several regimens, depending on their needs. “Someone with renal or kidney disease may need a diet with low potassium where other people may need a diet with high protein. And unfortunately, many of our clients have more than one illness. So when a client comes to us, they’re connected with our client-services team and a registered dietician then works with the client to figure out which diets would be best.”
MANNA recently completed a study that established that medically appropriate meals can keep patients in their homes and out of the health-care system.
As a dietician who formerly worked in acute-care hospitals, Dougherty said she’s seen firsthand the power of nutrition as medicine.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people admitted with a diagnosis of failure to thrive or dehydration,” she said. “So often, the discussion is around food insecurity, which is certainly an issue, but not enough conversations are happening around therapeutic nutrition as treatment.”
MANNA is committed to accepting all eligible clients, she added, and it is their stories that keep the agency invested in this work.
“You look at that number, 10 million, and it’s really our clients that motivate us,” she said. “In the 23 years of this organization, we’ve never had to say no to anyone who’s eligible for our services, and that envelope gets pushed each year more and more. But I come to work in the morning and look at the referrals from the previous night and think, How could we say no? You see a 45-year-old woman who was just diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer and has three small children. I can’t imagine the day we would have to say no and put anyone on a waiting list. Our clients are our motivation.”
Just as inspiring as the clients are the more-than 100 daily volunteers who assist with food prep and delivery.
With a full-time staff of just 30, volunteers are one of the driving forces behind MANNA’s 10-millionth meal milestone.
“For every full-time employee, we usually have two full-time volunteers. It’s really the thousands of people who’ve ever volunteered who make all this happen,” she said. “They chop, dice, prep, pack and that’s so inspiring to me. Those people get it. They believe, they’re passionate and they’re the reason we can celebrate our 10-millionth meal. Without them, we wouldn’t have survived.”
For more information, visit www.mannapa.org.