GARDEN GROVE : Meals for Seniors Needs Money Boost

Senior citizens have been preparing for tough economic times by chipping in their pennies, nickels and dimes to help pay the cost of almost 1,200 meals that are provided each day to elderly shut-ins and others.

For weeks, seniors at the H. Louis Lake Senior Center in Garden Grove have been depositing coins in a five-gallon bottle that has been filled to overflowing. “Every penny I have, I put in the bottle,” said Fran Giafaglione, 78, a Senior Center volunteer for nearly 20 years. “I know it’s the only nutritious meal that some of them get.”

Dana Biro, executive director of Senior Meals and Services, which serves seniors in Garden Grove, Westminster, Cypress, Stanton, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach and Midway City, said times are bleaker now for seniors dependent on meal programs than they have been in her previous 15 years in this field.

She warned that if funding and contributions continue to decline, severe belt-tightening may be imposed.

Senior Meals and Services may be forced to cut staff, consolidate the centers where lunches are served and reduce the daily delivery of home meals from two to one, Biro said.

The future may depend on whether the financially strapped city of Garden Grove, which gave the organization nearly $25,000 for the current year, can continue funding at its current level, she said. The group also holds various fund-raising events.

During the current fiscal year, meal recipients have made voluntary contributions of $26,000, and the nonprofit organization received $520,000 through the Older Americans Act. But it is facing a $10,000 reduction from that source in the new fiscal year, starting July 1.

Biro said funding priorities have shifted to drug prevention and programs for younger people. But in the past decade, there has been a 33% increase in Orange County’s senior citizen population in Orange County, from 229,000 to 306,417, said Peggy Weatherspoon, executive director of Orange County’s Area Agency on Aging.