(Photos courtesy Wasatch County Senior Center Facebook page)
LaRee Pedro loves to stay busy. She calls herself a “Jill of all trades” who enjoys volunteering and seeing positive things happen in the community. She’s been the president of several organizations, is active in her church, has been involved in Education Week at Brigham Young University, and much more.
“When you’ve been involved in so many things, you don’t want to sit at home after you retire,” she said.
Pedro, who’s lived in Wallsburg in Wasatch County since 1984, was looking for something new to keep her busy. That’s when she found the Wasatch County Senior Center. Now, Pedro eats lunch at the center with friends and participates in activities and day trips. She found a new volunteer opportunity there, too: delivering care packages to seniors in need.
The Wasatch County Senior Center has a full schedule of fun activities for locals 65 and older. It also serves homebound seniors and the increasing number of seniors who don’t have access to enough food. Keep reading to learn more about the senior center and its partnership with Community Action Services and Food Bank.
What’s the Wasatch County Senior Center?
The senior center, which shares a building with the Wasatch County Library, serves about 4,000 people ages 65 and older. There’s a commercial kitchen as well as spaces where people gather for activities and meetings. It serves a free lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It also regularly hosts classes and activities, including knitting, ceramics, chess club, piano lessons, and more. For more active seniors, it organizes day and extended trips and tours.
Pedro calls the center a special haven for seniors throughout the county. “It’s the best place in town and you don’t even have to tip!”
Besides all the fun, though, the senior center has another purpose—serving older people in need. It prepares Meals on Wheels in its kitchen, which are then delivered to 50–100 homebound seniors by the local Area on Aging Office. It also has a network of volunteers, like Pedro, who deliver care packages for people who can’t leave home.
How Does Community Action Services Help?
Community Action Services and Food Bank serves people in Wasatch, Utah, and Summit Counties, offering services and food banks in multiple locations. To make it easy for Wasatch County seniors in need to get help, we provide the center with bags and boxes of canned and other dry goods for people to take home. The center leaves the goods on a table in the dining room for easy access. When the center knows of someone in need who can’t leave home, it has volunteers deliver the boxes.
Pedro said the boxes are full of items that people can really use, including shelf-stable milk.
The Wasatch County Senior Center serves essential needs in the community by providing fun activities, weekly lunches, Meals on Wheels, and—through its partnership with Community Action—boxes of food for seniors in need. If you’re interested in helping seniors in need in the community, earmark a donation through our website. For just $36, you can help a struggling senior for an entire month.