The following is a transcription of The Art of Volunteering Episode 7: Jeanne Martin, Meals on Wheels North Jersey.
Stormy Bell (00:00): Welcome to the episode of The Art of Volunteering. My name is Stormy Bell and I’m your host. Today I’m speaking with a long time friend, Jeanne Martin. She’s the Executive Director of Meals on Wheels North Jersey and we’re gonna talk about how volunteers are vital to their delivery model. I’m gonna introduce Jeanne and let her tell you a little bit about herself.
Jeanne Martin (00:22): Hi Stormy. Hi everyone. I’m Jeanne Martin and I’m the Executive Director, as Stormy said, for Meals on Wheels. I’ve been involved with this organization for about 17 or 18 years. Prior to that, I had worked as the administrator for another nonprofit called Christian Overcomers, a disability ministry, but when this job came available, I kind of always wanted this job. Helping people, [serving] people, elderly people has always been a passion of mine and feeding people has always been something that I felt, even though I’m not a very good cook, but I like to make sure people are fed. Our organization is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. We were started by a very dynamic woman named Margaret Cook in 1972. There are 5,000 Meals on Wheels programs in the United States and if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one. They’re all very different. There are Meals on Wheels programs that are strictly run by governments, by towns, by states, by counties, and then there are many nonprofits and some run by churches, [and] some run by temples. We’re all different but we have the same basic mission of helping seniors get nutrition.
Stormy Bell (01:43): Oh, that’s awesome. How many people do you serve and how many volunteers do you have?
Jeanne Martin (01:47): It’s kind of interesting. We serve about 200 clients right now in our area and we cover 30 towns in Northern Bergen County but we have over 500 volunteers. We ask our volunteers to drive once a month so it’s not a heavy lift for them. We also have volunteers that assist us with our accounting. As a matter of fact, I’m here on a Saturday and my volunteer accountant is here this morning, doing our billing system. We have a volunteer board of about 12 members now who meet monthly. and our volunteers. The volunteering for actually delivering the meals takes about an hour and a half to two hours. Our drivers pick up the meals at a central location and then deliver to between 10 and 15 clients.
Jeanne Martin (02:55): Our motto is we’re more than a meal and because of our volunteers, we are more than a meal. Our volunteers are the eyes and ears. Many of them don’t have any family members living nearby so our volunteers are eyes on our clients. They see if Mrs. Jones doesn’t look the same as she did the last time they delivered. The house is more [of] a mess, is their food is not being eaten, there’s a lot of trash lying around. That’s a cue for us. We’ve caught people who’ve had minor strokes because of our volunteers, or elder abuse because of our volunteers. They step in and see, okay, the home health aid is there but she’s not letting us interact with the clients where she’s very combative with us when we wanna see or visit with the client. We’ve had a number of police involvement where abusers have been arrested and that’s been because our volunteers have got the ice.
Stormy Bell (03:48): Wow.
Jeanne Martin (03:49): Yeah it’s really something. We’re a lot more than a meal.
Stormy Bell (03:53): If your volunteers see someone who, they’re slurring their words and they don’t normally slur their words, what are your next steps? What do you do? Report back and you have connections to their family members. Is that how it works?
Jeanne Martin (04:06): Yeah and it’s not one size fits all for every instance of what happened. We did have someone not too long ago, the driver was very concerned so they called us and we called their family member who was out of state but we had a conversation. So what would you like us to do? They said can you call the police to have them go over? In another instance we’ve done that and the family member has gone over and taken them to the doctor and found out what’s going on. When we suspect self harm or someone’s being abused by someone else we either contact 911 ourselves through either the 911 system, or we call adult protective services, which they’ll send somebody out right away to do an evaluation.
Stormy Bell (04:56): Wow I didn’t realize it was that involved. I mean, my mom’s been a recipient of Meals on Wheels in Northeast, Pennsylvania and my grandmother before her so I’m familiar with them bringing the food, kind of checking on them, and having an update. There’s been a couple times with my grandmother who lived to be 97 and she still lived on her own up until like the last six years of her life and they would check. If something wasn’t right, my mom would get a call, [you] need to go check on your mom. Just go up and have a conversation, see how she is doing. So I knew that happened, but not to the extent that you just shared.
Jeanne Martin (05:34): Yeah. We’re very fortunate to have a licensed social worker that works for us part time. When something comes up, when a driver calls about a client that they’re concerned [about], that is the start of the process. If we get another we record it and we report it if necessary and sometimes we just take notes. If it’s not something that looks like imminent danger, we’ll take notes and if we hear from another volunteer, that’s when we really step up the game. We’ve had one woman who had been with us for probably 12 years and it got to the point where we had to call, not just adult protective services, but 262-HELP. She is currently against her will, taken to a hospital for evaluation.
Jeanne Martin (06:23): She had no one to take her, help her with her affairs so the state is taking guardianship of her. I just spoke to her social worker yesterday in the hospital and she said, ‘you know Jeanne, you’re the only person that’s called in, in regard to her in the two months she’s been here. You’re the only person. Is there anybody?’. I said, ‘just people in the neighborhood.’ She’d been scammed out of over a hundred thousand dollars. Complicated. It’s simple but it’s complicated.
Stormy Bell (07:01): If someone comes on and they’re gonna be a driver, what type of training do they have to go through?
Jeanne Martin (07:08): We’re stepping up our game on that one too. There’s a background check that we do. So someone fills out an application online, we get the application, we send them a background check, background check comes back, [and] they come in and meet with me. It’s interesting you can see a lot about a person in just an interview. You know, oh, they’re, they’re not in this for the right reason or they are in this for the right reason. Then they go out with one of our client coordinators who takes them and shows them the ropes. It’s one of those things you can show somebody a video, but until they’re actually in it doing it.
Stormy Bell: Experiencing it.
Jeanne Martin (07:48): Yeah experiencing it, you don’t understand what’s involved. People have been doing it. Once they do it once or twice they’re hooked.
Stormy Bell (07:59): So you have strong retention with your volunteers?
Jeanne Martin (08:02): Oh yeah. The longest volunteer we had was over 40 years.
Stormy Bell (08:11): Wow. So that’s, so they got in pretty close to the beginning.
Jeanne Martin (08:16): Yeah. She started when the organization started. She started in 1972 as a volunteer and she ended up being a recipient of Meals on Wheels before she passed away.
Stormy Bell (08:34): Full circle.
Jeanne Martin (08:35):Yeah. Some people do it for like a year or two. We’ve had an interesting mix of volunteers. We’ve had college students, which have been a lot of fun. We had pre-med students from Ramapo College volunteering for us once a month. A lot of stay at home moms over the years have worked with us. A lot of retirees. We still have a lot of retirees who [are] younger retirees and actually some older retirees. Our oldest retiree that volunteers is 92, 93.
Stormy Bell (09:11): Oh God bless them.
Jeanne Martin (09:16): Lately an interesting group that’s come in are our business people who either have been home because of the pandemic and can spare an hour or two a month to deliver during lunch time or just business owners who said, you know what I wanna give back. Rotary clubs have volunteered for us. Women’s clubs. We’re all over the map.
Stormy Bell (09:48): That’s awesome. Wow. You talked about [how] you have like what 500 volunteers, but you are a paid staff and you have how many other people?
Jeanne Martin (10:01): We have fourish.
Stormy Bell (10:04): Four. So organizationally you’re quite small even though you have a large reach.
Jeanne Martin (10:09): Yeah. We have a part-time business manager Lisa who does more than that title would allude to. It’s everything. Everything. Then we have Amanda, who’s our client coordinator who’s in the kitchen in the morning by six o’clock and she gets all the meals, packed for our clients and then comes back and gets all the computer part of that done. Allie, our social worker is part-time as well. Then we have a van driver Nick who transports the meals from the kitchen that we cater with down to [the] central pickup point for our drivers.
Stormy Bell (10:49): So your cooks are volunteers too?
Jeanne Martin (10:51): No, we hire a caterer. Our vendor right now is Rockland County Meals on Wheels, which is an adjoining county to where we are. They do our meals and we pay them to do the meals. But Amanda, our employee, is in a kitchen with them, making sure our meals are done properly.
Stormy Bell (11:13): Very cool. You work with dietary restrictions and you’re able to accommodate that?
Jeanne Martin (11:19): Yeah, we have it. It’s funny this lady was very picky with her meals. She would say, ‘I don’t want any fish.’ ‘Okay, no fish.’ ‘I don’t want any beef.’ ‘Okay, no beef. No fish, no beef. Okay.’ ‘I don’t want any pork.’ ‘Okay. No fish, no beef, no pork.’ ‘I don’t want any chicken.’ ‘Okay, no chicken.’ ‘I don’t want any pasta. ‘Okay, no pasta. This leaves like, there’s no protein. I can come up with something’ and she’s like, ‘oh, let’s start all over again. Just no fish.’
Stormy Bell (11:55): That’s awesome.
Jeanne Martin (11:56): We do the best we can. You know, food is something that people like to control. It’s not always so easy, but we do the best we can.
Stormy Bell (12:06): I’m gonna give you an opportunity to love on your organization now. Anything you wanna share, like how awesome you are and how awesome your volunteers are. Just go right ahead.
Jeanne Martin (12:15): Oh my gosh. In Bergen County, this is national volunteer month, I think it’s everywhere. There’s a local agency in Bergen County called the Volunteer Center and they said, ‘do you have any special volunteer that you want to honor?’ I’m like how can I possibly pick one? It’s like, how can I pick one? I’ve got 500 really conscientious, considerate, incredible people who are there [at] their scheduled time getting things ready. They’re on it. As I mentioned earlier, our motto is more than a meal. A couple of months ago, I don’t know if you read the story. A couple of months ago, one of my long, long ago clients we’d lost track of her.
Jeanne Martin (13:10): She had been another client who had been scammed and had a very serious decline in her mental abilities and had been taken out of her home. We lost track of her until I saw her obituary in the paper. I said, you know what? She meant a lot to me, Marilyn, so I’m gonna go to the funeral. I went to the cemetery at the scheduled time and nobody came. I called the funeral home and I was like, ‘Hey, you know, this was scheduled for three o’clock I’m here. I’ve been here since quarter and three and it’s quarter after three and nobody’s come. What’s happening?’ ‘Oh, we were done early for the day. We didn’t think anybody would be there. So we buried her early.’
Stormy Bell (13:52): Oh.
Jeanne Martin (13:53): So I. Woo. Stormy…
Stormy Bell (13:59): You got your Jersey on.
Jeanne Martin (14:02): I called a couple of people who I said, you know what, this isn’t right. We have to have a funeral for her. A proper funeral. I called women ministers I knew and the local restaurant owner who’s been part of Meals on Wheels, our program for 50 years. It started with him and our founder 50 years ago. He said, we’re gonna have a funeral. You got the minister, we’ll get our volunteers and we’ll go over and we’ll have a proper burial for her. So we had a service for her and we had a reporter come. The reporter put it into The Record, the local newspaper, and out of the woodwork came these people that knew her. Out of the woodwork.
Stormy Bell: Really?
Jeanne Martin (14:51): She was the it girl. I remember Marilyn. She was so beautiful. We thought she was gonna be a movie star in Hollywood. I remember her husband. They owned a gas station in town. We had about 10 people there and we all remembered Marilyn. She was kind of a difficult at times ornery person, but Stormy, she would write me letters every single month. These are letters from Marilyn. She’s been off our program for like eight years but these are like two page, two sided letters from Marilyn, every single month telling me how much she loved the volunteers and she loved the food and everything was scrumptious.
Stormy Bell (15:47): Wow. The impact you just don’t realize
Jeanne Martin (15:51): You just don’t. You don’t realize. You don’t realize what one small, simple thing of delivering a meal, how it impacts a person’s life. You know just a smile, a visit. We have a number of kids from all over that send cards and letters to our clients. I thought, oh man, they probably don’t like getting all this “stuff”. They love it. They absolutely love it because they don’t have anybody in their life.
Stormy Bell (16:24): Yes and as they get older, their circles get smaller and smaller. They look forward to seeing a smiling face every day or whatever schedule they’re on.
Jeanne Martin (16:35): Yeah. I always encourage parents if their kids are off from school. They’re like, oh, can we bring our kids? I’m like, absolutely. To see young people, that’s like such a great spark.
Stormy Bell (16:48): Yes. It’s good for them to see the whole cycle of life too.
Jeanne Martin (16:54): Yeah. It’s all great stuff. A number of years ago I had a boy call up. He was a young kid, 13, getting ready for his bar mitzvah so he is not quite 13. I’m like, what am I? It was the first time I’d used kids as volunteers. Like, what am I gonna do with this kid? I said, what do you like to do? He’s like I like football and I like dogs. So I said, well, what do you wanna do? He was awesome. He wrote down 20 questions to ask our clients, he recorded the questions, met with them, asked the questions, wrote them down, and then gave it back to them as a gift. As like a life review.
Stormy Bell (17:35): Oh wow!
Jeanne Martin (17:36): Oh, it was awesome. It was awesome. It was really something.
Stormy Bell (17:41): And he’s 12. I mean, he hasn’t had his bar mitzvah, so he is 12.
Jeanne Martin (17:44): He’s 12, yeah. I think he’s twenties now, in college. Really sweet guy and we’ve kept in touch with his mom and dad [who] live in the same town as me. So when there was a gentleman in the building that he interviewed here, Mr. Sitbon, who was a Holocaust survivor from Tunisia, and they had a special bond. Mr. Sitbon’s father was a rabbi in Tunisia and during World War II, the Germans, it switched back and forth, the Germans and the Allies had control of Tunisia. So he lived under German rule and under Allied rule. Just when the war ended, they were getting ready to build internment camps in his town and then the war ended. He and this young man became really close.
Jeanne Martin (18:40): So when he made his bar mitzvah, he invited Mr. Sitbon and myself to attend and then talked about the impact Mr. Sitbon had on his life. Mr. Sitbon passed away last year. He was so charming. He was French and he worked in a French restaurant. He was just so worldly and so courtly. When he passed away this young man’s family reached out to me and how much, you know, he had meant to them.
Stormy Bell (19:11): Priceless.
Jeanne Martin (19:13): It really is something. it really is something.
Stormy Bell (19:16): Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This was fun.
Jeanne Martin (19:20): Anytime, Stormy. It was great catching up with you.
Stormy Bell (19:24): It’s great catching up with you and thank you for all the amazing work that you’re doing in North Jersey affecting so many lives. All right. Well, thank you for joining us today for The Art of Volunteering. I look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great day bye-bye.
Show Notes & Links
Meals on Wheels North Jersey – www.mealsonwheelsnorthjersey.org
Meals on Wheels of Rockland County – www.mowrockland.org
No one came to 98-year-old’s funeral, so these angels gave her another one – www.njersy.co/3NYy2S5
This Bergen woman was buried alone. But now everyone has a story to share about her – www.njersy.co/3OjtghC
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