Continuing to Serve: How One Educator Supports Seniors Through Meals on Wheels

A Lifetime of Service

For the past four years, Joel Solo has volunteered with Meals on Wheels San Antonio, helping deliver meals to seniors across the community. For him, the work is deeply personal.

Before volunteering, Joel spent 36 years working in public education, where he saw firsthand how important food and nutrition are to a person’s well-being.

“I knew that families have needs,” Joel says. “Food and nutrition is just so important.”

Now, through Meals on Wheels, he continues serving people in another meaningful way — one meal and one visit at a time.

In the kitchen, volunteers work together to prepare and package meals for homebound seniors throughout San Antonio. Later, Joel loads meals for delivery and heads out on his route, stopping at homes where a warm meal and a familiar face can make all the difference.

“It’s very sad and unfortunate when somebody who you know is hungry or needs that nutrition and they don’t have a way to get it,” Joel says.

From the Kitchen to the Community

Like many communities across the country, San Antonio faces a growing need for senior nutrition services and a waitlist of older adults hoping to receive meals.

Joel believes the organization is prepared to meet that need — with the right support.

“They have this beautiful facility that I think is highly functional,” he says. “They have the capabilities to do whatever they would need to do here with the right resources — both money and people.”

Meeting a Growing Need

For volunteers like Joel, Meals on Wheels represents more than meal delivery. It’s a community coming together to ensure older adults are cared for, nourished and not forgotten.

“If the resources were there,” Joel says, “we probably could take care of everybody on the list.”

Every volunteer shift, every prepared tray, and every knock on a door helps move that goal closer to reality.