The Family to Family Meal Program is designed to provide ongoing support to families who are struggling with serious long term illness. Meals are cooked to dietary specifications of the individual person or family, free of charge. A home cooked meal is designed to remind the recipient that they live in a caring community. Family to Family provides a cooler that remains outside the front door. Meals can be delivered and brought inside at any time. A visit along with a meal is optional, based on the recipient’s wishes. Meals are typically provided once per week but can be up to three times a week for the duration of an illness.

It is life changing when meals are provided by volunteers who live in the recipient’s immediate community. One family has the ability to provide a meal as a gesture of support for another family who they may not know. Both the volunteers and recipients benefit emotionally from this exchange as it provides a mechanism to create community connections that would not otherwise occur. Cooks, drivers and visitors are recruited from communities of faith, schools, and sports leagues. Volunteers have the opportunity to provide a meal once a week or once a year.

Recipients and volunteers can choose be completely anonymous (or not) depending on their wishes. There are no financial requirements to qualify. The goal is to increase community support during a time of loneliness and isolation due to serious illness and have the costs provided through donations and grants.

Problems / Issues This Program Addresses

The isolation of those struggling with serious illness exists in every community. Children with seriously ill parents often feel great alienation, as do senior citizens with out local family or adequate social support. A meal provides the opportunity for the outside word to come in and to bring a sense of normalcy back to life. This can be critical when the illness is both long and serious.

Prior to diagnosis, many of these families enjoyed the dialogue and interaction that naturally occurs during a family meal, on a regular basis. Years ago neighbors used to create informal networks to rally around a family who was in crisis. In today’s busy world this is no longer the case. These days, communities need a structure to create meaningful community support. Family to Family creates a structure to reach those who are most vulnerable in our communities.

Who Benefits and How

The loneliness and isolation of those seriously ill is an enormous problem in communities today. Children with parents receiving chemotherapy instantly have a life that often revolves around managing illness rather than living life. Food is one way in which we can nurture one another. The individual or family who provides the meal benefits by having been given the opportunity to change someone’s world by this simple act of kindness. Families and individuals need normalcy in their lives at a time when everything has been disrupted.

No one wants to be defined by their illness. We would all like to be thought of as the vibrant, thoughtful mother, father, husband brother, sister or friend that we were prior to diagnosis. Sitting down to a home cooked dinner provides an opportunity to restore hope and normalcy to a situation which before may have felt hopeless.