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Date: 10/17/2023
SOUTH HADLEY – The town’s seniors and veterans are invited to Iona’s Kitchen on Sunday, Nov. 5 for “A Place at the Table: A community meal for South Hadley’s seniors and veterans.”
Located at 20 Main St., Iona’s Kitchen will host the community meal with seatings at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. during the afternoon. The meal is a pay-what-you-can meal for seniors and veterans and to RSVP visit https://www.southhadleyseniors.org. There is limited capacity, so those interested in going should RSVP as soon as possible. There are also hard copy forms to be filled out to RSVP located at the Senior Center.
Member of the Friends of the South Hadley Seniors Kim Prough said this is the first version of this community meal event after a couple months of brainstorming with the town. Prough said Town Administrator Lisa Wong brought in groups like the Friends of the South Hadley Seniors and other private nonprofits in town to discuss what work was being done to support seniors, veterans or anyone with a glaring need from their community.
“It was an initial spring of a bigger conversation, but it just got people talking and thinking about it,” Prough said.
The issue of food security was brought up and Prough and the team at Friends of South Hadley Seniors knew this was an area that could continue to be improved on for the benefit of seniors in town. Prough explained the community meal could help address this one issue as well as bring together the many seniors that live by themselves or are less social together for a community meal.
“We all sort of agreed we wanted to do a community meal where people come together in community. Not just where they come to pick up a meal and take it home, but to provide an opportunity for people to come together and so that’s kind of how this was sort of born,” Prough said.
The pay-what-you-can model was important to the nonprofit as to show those who would benefit from the community meal that they are welcomed regardless of financial limitations.
“It can be free, it can be anything you want to put in. You want to put in 50 cents, you want to put in $1, it really doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that we just want to provide a feel that people could come and have fellowship with one another,” Prough said.
She added they will try to get some sort of live entertainment set to go along with the meal and that they were trying to establish a welcoming place for people to eat. Prough said for homebound seniors, they will have volunteers set to deliver meals to those folks.
Prough said an event like this is part of the mission of the Friends of the South Hadley Seniors and she is happy for the group to be spearheading the efforts. She thanked partners in the community such as the Veterans Service groups, the Council on Aging, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, Iona’s Kitchen for hosting, and the Cultural Council.
“I think anytime there’s an opportunity for us to collaborate our resources it just makes it even that much better,” Prough said.
Prough hopes turnout is good for the event and seniors and veterans that could benefit from the community meal take advantage of the opportunity.
“We’re really excited and we’re looking to see how well this will be received because it’s something that we’d like to do perhaps on a more regular basis,” Prough added.