RESPONDING TO THE COVID-19 CRISIS

While much of the city shuttered this year, our home-delivered meals have continued without interruption. Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, Citymeals has delivered over 2 million meals to our frail aged neighbors – 800,000 more than during the same time period last year. 

As the designated emergency responder for the city’s seniors, it is not only our regular meal recipients who have come to depend on us. For many older New Yorkers, a trip to the grocery store or food pantry is simply too risky. Others relied on breakfast and lunch from their local senior centers which remain closed. Now isolated at home, many vulnerable elderly face the prospect of going hungry.

Citymeals has provided emergency shelf-stable meals for more than 50,000 older New Yorkers, both those already on delivery routes prior to March 2020 and those newly at risk for hunger with the onset of the pandemic, many living in senior or public housing. Even now, demand for meals remains nearly 40% higher than it was a year ago.

Today, Citymeals is providing home-delivered meals for weekends, holidays and emergencies to nearly 20,000 of the city’s most vulnerable population, including 2,500 of our elderly neighbors who have been added to regular delivery routes since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.

Nearly 7,000 volunteers have joined our dedicated staff on the frontlines to ensure meal deliveries continue uninterrupted. For the homebound elderly, who are too frail to shop or cook for themselves, these deliveries provide critical nutrition and a regular wellness check-in.

You can sign up to volunteer and help your frail aged neighbors by delivering meals, making phone calls or creating handmade cards.

What’s going on is just terrible. Thank you so much for checking in. It gets pretty lonely here.

– Millie, 94-year-old Citymeals recipient 

Even before Covid-19, our meal recipients were isolated. Now they are more vulnerable than ever. Hear from some of them about how the pandemic is impacting their lives.

You can stay up-to-date on our evolving emergency response through our press statements and check out coverage of our work.

Citymeals is partnering with restaurants and others in the culinary community, who have donated products, services and meals to help nourish Citymeals recipients during this unprecedented time. We have also received generous support from our corporate and foundation partners, as well as retail partners who are donating a portion of proceeds from their sales.