If you've currently got some extra time during the day to do some volunteering, the Saskatchewan Health Authority could use your help with its Meals on Wheels program.

"Right now, what we are currently looking for is volunteers who are willing, across the province, to assist us in delivering Meals on Wheels to people in their home communities, who are unable to prepare nutritious, well-balanced meals, in order to maintain their independence and stay in their own homes," said Bernie Doepker, Director of Volunteer Services for the SHA province-wide.

She said the role is simply picking up a well-balanced, nutritious meal from the designated location, and delivering it to the person's home.

"Since the pandemic, we have asked clients to put a table or a chair outside or just inside their doors, so that we can just deliver it to that door, and either call out to the clients, or give them a phone call if we have their numbers, and tell them that their meals are there, while still maintaining a bit of contact with the volunteer, and then going on to the next person, while always staying that two metres apart, or the six feet apart while we deliver," Doepker explained. "And then, ensuring we do our hand hygiene in between clients, in order to not take any infections or any germs that might be from one household to another."

As for the social aspect of the program, which is nearly as important as the nutritious meal, Doepker said there are ways to ensure a proper check-in with clients.

"If the client is ambulatory and able to come to the door, then they can still have that conversation back and forth while maintaining the social distance, but it is probably a little less than it would have been prior," she shared.

"Just like everything else in society, we've all been asked to take a step back and keep each other safe, so that's what we're doing, while still trying to have those social conversations and say to the client, 'Joe', 'Betty', 'how are you doing?', 'How are you feeling today?' And having short conversations to check how they are doing emotionally and physically."

Doepker explained that one of the main reasons they need volunteers at this time is because the original guidelines set out after the province had declared the state of emergency included having volunteers over the age of 65 discontinue helping with the program.

"We were asking volunteers over the age of 65 to take a step back, in order to keep them safe and to keep our clients safe as well, and that's why it's so dire right now. For the most part, our volunteer population was retired, in that early stage of retirement, or older."

"We had some volunteers delivering meals who were well into their 80s who had been doing it since the early 1980s when it started," added Doepker.

In the meantime, they had supplemented their volunteers with staff who weren't doing their regular duties, but with most services now resuming, the SHA are finding their volunteer base needing to be increased.

She said getting into volunteering with the program involves a training process facilitated by local volunteer coordinators, and includes Criminal Record checks, and Vulnerable Sector checks, as well as the added hand hygiene orientation and infection control screening protocols.

Nonetheless, whoever volunteers will need to be available at lunchtime.

"In almost all communities across the province, our meals are delivered at noon, so that's when the time commitment would be," she noted.

"So even some of the university students who are going to be taking online classes, or people who are working from home now, if they can extend their lunch by a bit, then they would be able to assist us in this, and it would really help out our programs."

She added that the program will require volunteers for at least a few more months, or until the regular volunteers are able to get back to service.

Find the application HERE.