Forty-three-year-old Community Connection of Wallowa County with its $1 million budget provides a multitude of services to local residents such as transportation and heating assistance, yet the popular among these — its senior meals program — receives minimal governmental financial support. Hence, for the second year in a row, CC’s assistant manager, Jeanette Johnson, is spearheading a three-pronged effort to raise money to keep meal sites in Enterprise and Wallowa, plus its Meals on Wheels program, operating year-around on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Two of the three efforts currently are underway: a mass mailing to businesses to promote meal sponsorships throughout the year; and advanced ticket sales for a reserved-seating Mother’s Day occasion set for Saturday, May 9, at the Community Connection meal site in Enterprise. The third major effort will transpire Oct. 10 at the Tamkaliks grounds in Wallowa when the Annual Harvestfest fund-raiser is scheduled to be held.

Johnson’s ambitious goal for the mailing and Mother’s Day efforts in 2015 is to raise $10,000 for the senior meals programs, well beyond the $5,400 secured via those avenues a year ago. An additional about $1,600 was raised at the 2014 Harvestfest event.

In her letter to businesses, Johnson says $10,000 “would pay for the cost of 3,135 meals for one year.”

In March alone during the 13 days that senior meals were served at both the Enterprise and Wallowa sites, a total of 909 meals were served to persons age 60 and older; 73 meals to persons at meal sites under the age of 60; 390 meals to at-home participants in the program who were delivered meals courtesy of the Meals-On-Wheels program; and 131 meals were served to volunteers.

And yet the United States Department of Agriculture with a proposed 2015 budget of $23 billion provides less than 7.4 percent of the money needed to keep the program operational.

The manager of this county’s Community Connection office (CC has offices elsewhere that provide services in Union, Baker, and Grant counties), Connie Guentert, has been at her post for just under one year and is hesitant to criticize USDA’s limited support for the program. “Yet,” she says, “it’s sad that the biggest chunk of funding to support that program is raised on the backs of our local residents.”

Those who avail themselves of hot meals at either of the two sites during those three days per week — if they are age 60 or older — can pay $3.50 for meals, submit donations, or eat for free, while younger patrons are asked to pay $5.75 for each meal. Money brought into Community Connection coffers via meal purchases totals more than 39 percent of the funding that supports the entire senior meal program in Wallowa County.

Other local sources of income to support the senior meals program here include meal sponsors (17 percent), donations (6 percent), fund-raising (5 percent), and money provided by advisors to the local centers (1.5 percent).

“The local support for this program is amazing,” Johnson says. She contends that as important as the nutritional aspect of the program is the element of socialization for many lonely people.

The largest chunk of non-local funding for the program, 24 percent, comes courtesy of the Older Americans Act initiated in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to, in part, support public nutrition.

Anyone interested in supporting the Community Connection senior meal program financially can make a tax-deductible contribution. Questions can be directed to either Johnson or Guentert at 541-426-3840.