Meal Delivery Volunteer & “Senior Script”

“I feel honored to be volunteering for Citymeals-on-Wheels. It’s very satisfying and humbling, especially for people who I think are the history of New York,” says Keri Potts, 29. In addition to her full-time job at ESPN and weekend meal delivery, Keri answers letters from meal recipients to Citymeals-on-Wheels via the “Senior Script” program. “In the letters I get, they tell their whole life stories. These people are vibrant and fabulous; they’ve done so much in their lives. One woman I’ve ‘met’ was a dancer, who still teaches and she’s in her nineties! I have made friends, as well as learning about what life was like here eighty years ago.”

Keri believes everyone should be volunteering for Citymeals. “It’s an outstanding organization in the service they provide and the way they treat their volunteers.” Volunteerism is nothing new to Keri. As a Division One athlete on a full sports scholarship at Syracuse University, Keri worked with children in sports clinics for years, but when she moved to New York a year ago, “Citymeals was the only organization where I wanted to volunteer.”

She feels she does so little considering the lives of the people she sees on her meal deliveries. “It’s such a basic need I’m providing, I feel almost guilty that I don’t do more.”