United Way Helps Americans Achieve Financial Security
As many as one-third of working Americans do not earn enough money to meet their basic needs. Wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of housing, healthcare, and education. Currently, 40 million Americans are working in low-paying jobs without basic health and retirement benefits. For families walking a financial tightrope, unable to save for college, a home, or retirement, United Way is here to help.
How we help
Focusing on work and school are difficult when the essentials - hunger, housing, and safety - are not being met. That is why we invest in programs that help individuals facing emergency situations by covering the basics and providing financial counseling.
Success Story
East Central Kansas Agency Area on Aging
All of our nutrition sites were shut down to dine in eating when COVID occurred in March. Our nutrition program, however, never stopped serving meals as we immediately went into a Grab and Go mode of operation at all the sites. This allowed us to serve our congregate participants a daily meal even though our sites were closed to participants. We immediately adapted the sealed tray method of food delivery for our congregate participants like we had already been doing for our home delivery participants. All meals were packaged at the central kitchen in Ottawa and then taken to the sites. From there the site managers met congregate participants in the parking lot with their meal. this allowed us to remain open and serve all of sites on a daily basis using a different format. All staff used safety protocol measures to remain safe and we provided PPE for our participants so they could remain safe as well. Some sites slowly began opening to dine in eating when the senior center they were housed in opened. We have dine in eating in Burlington, Lebo, Waverly, Osage City, Carbondale and Burlingame at the current time using safety protocols and pre-plated food. We are very proud to say we were able to shift to a different format in a very short amount of time to continue providing our meals!