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About MANNA » Our Mission and Story

Our Mission and Story


Improving health. Delivering nourishment.

 

Especially for people at acute nutritional risk due to life-threatening illness, MANNA (Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance)prepares and delivers delicious nourishing meals and counsel, empowering individuals to battle illness and improve their quality of life.

Each month, MANNA prepares and home-delivers more than 70,000 nutritious meals to individuals and families living with HIV/AIDS, cancer or other life-threatening illnesses. MANNA's small professional staff and 1,500 dedicated volunteers deliver medically appropriate nutrition to our clients - 3 meals a day, 7 days a week - at no charge. MANNA dietitians promote wellness through nutrition education and counseling. Through these services, MANNA provides opportunities for caring people to extend loving support to families, friends, and neighbors.
 
If you or someone you know should need MANNA meals or would like to volunteer, please call 215-49-MANNA.
 
 
 

 

About MANNA
 
MANNA nourishes the mind, body and spirit of clients, volunteers and supporters alike. Drawn from all walks of life, the young, old, urban and suburban come together with one common goal: to promote wellness through nutrition for people at acute nutritional risk living in Eastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey.

Formed in 1990 by members of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, MANNA is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is non-sectarian. MANNA provides essential and specialized services to men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illness.

MANNA offers opportunities for caring people to provide loving support to families, friends, and neighbors, MANNA enables local families and individuals to be more independent as they learn to cope with a serious illness.

Financial support comes from corporations large and small, foundations, faith communities, the public sector, special event fundraising, and individuals.

  • 7,349,135+ meals served to date
  • MANNA serves children and adults, individuals and families
  • MANNA delivers meals and nutritional counseling to home and clinic settings
  • 85% of MANNA's clients are African-American or Latino
  • More than 85% of MANNA's clients are very low-income by Federal HUD guidelines
  • Enough yearly delivery miles to circle the globe 6 times
"Our primary goal was to express, on behalf of the community as a whole, the love and care we would all want if any of us were in similar circumstances. The physical food was the gift, but the repeated assurance that the community cared was the real message."     -Kenwyn Smith, A MANNA founder

 

Service

Now in its twentieth year of service, MANNA offers home-delivered, medically appropriate meals to help boost the body's ability to fight serious illnesses, provides education and counseling to help clients make intelligent nutrition choices, and offers compassionate human contact that links consumers in need with caring community volunteers from all walks of life. Together, these free services help people with a life-threatening illness maintain their independence and live longer, healthier lives.

 
Home-Delivered Nutrition
 
Nutrition is a basic human need. For people living with a life-threatening illness like cancer or HIV/AIDS, it is especially important as both the illness and its treatments can lead to appetite loss, malnourishment, and wasting. A solid nutritional base allows people to maintain weight, better tolerate and absorb medications, and build a healthier, more independent lifestyle. Proper nutrition enhances the immune system and prevents the onset of deadly infections. According to the National Cancer Institute "Patients who maintain good nutrition are more likely to tolerate the side effects of treatment." MANNA's medically appropriate, home-delivered meals provide this critical nutrition to help clients maintain optimal health as they undergo treatment.
 
Operations

MANNA chefs and volunteers work together to prepare and package over 3,500 medically appropriate meals each weekday for individuals and families living with a life-threatening illness such as cancer, diabetes or HIV/AIDS - in total, delivering more than 70,000 meals a month.

Dependent Meals

MANNA recognizes that the client may not be the only family member at risk during a fight against a life-threatening illness. When the family's primary caretaker is suffering, shopping and food preparation can become impossible. The entire family suffers. In recognition of this serious issue, MANNA clients who are the primary caregivers for their family receive meals for both themselves and their dependents. MANNA also makes a special effort to provide each client with extra touches that let them know someone cares: cards at holidays, cakes on their birthday, even handmade gifts created with love by schoolchildren across Philadelphia.

Education and Counseling

MANNA's nutrition education and counseling services are equally important. MANNA registered dietitians work with clients to help them understand the role of nutrition in disease management and provide them with the necessary tools to take charge of their own nutritional needs. They provide recipes, cooking tips and techniques, food safety information, advice on hunger and appetite management, and referrals to social service providers. They serve as advocates, working with the client's physician to facilitate access to medications such as appetite stimulants and nutritional supplements and helping clients negotiate the often difficult maze of insurance red tape to ensure coverage of critical medications. Often, because of the relationships they build with clients, MANNA nutritionists recognize the early symptoms of medication side effects and work with the client's physician to address these issues.

Volunteer Corps

MANNA's volunteer corps is critical to its mission, comprising 97% of its workforce and providing an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 hours of uncompensated service each year. By leveraging the efforts of more than 1,500 volunteers annually, MANNA is able provide more than 800,000 meals and almost 2,000 hours of nutrition counseling services to individuals and families throughout the greater Philadelphia area. MANNA is truly an organization of neighbors helping neighbors: schoolchildren and senior citizens, poor and affluent, employed and retired - all working together to bring nourishment to those in need. This "labor of love" on the part of so many volunteers allows MANNA to devote a high percentage of its critical resources to direct services.