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ELKINS -- The Barbour County Senior Center has received a $75,000 grant that will go toward the purchase of a new home delivery food truck for the facility.
The money was made available through Gov. Jim Justice's Senior Center Projects Special Grant Program in October of last year.
In response to the reduction of deferral COVID-19 relief funds for nutrition and senior centers in May of last year, Justice earmarked $3.8 million in funding opportunities to support West Virginia's senior centers.
"We are excited that we received a grant to get a new hot-cold meal delivery truck for the center," Barbour County Senior Center Director Mike Alkire told The Inter-Mountain.
"We've already placed the order for the truck and it usually takes around eight months to get it, because it's specially made with the hot-cold area in the back."
Alkire said the truck, which has been ordered from a dealership in Danville, will help fill a major need at the senior center.
"We've got some vehicles that we use that are a little bit older, so it's nice to be able to update our vehicles, because we do put a lot of miles on them," he said. "Some of our routes are pretty long. There's one route that is around 100 miles once it's completed. So getting a new vehicle is very helpful for what we are trying to do here."
Alkire said the senior center typically delivers around 300 meals per week in Barbour County.
"We do a lot of delivery meals throughout the entire county," Alkire said. "Delivering meals is a service that gets used quite a bit in Barbour County. And there's a lot of wear and tear on our vehicles because of how many deliveries we do."
The new senior center vehicle will be a 4-wheel drive, F150 Ford truck. It will have areas built into the bed that will store both hot and cold food items.
"We are very happy that the truck is going to be 4-wheel drive," Alkire said. "We seem to alway have issues getting to some places when the weather is bad, so the new truck is going to help a lot."
The Barbour County Senior Center, located in downtown Philippi, offers a full range of senior services and has been serving citizens in Barbour County since 1972. For more information, visit the center's Facebook page or call 304-457-4545.