PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The nonprofit organization that believes “food is medicine” is celebrating 35 years of nourishing the chronically ill throughout the greater Philadelphia region.
The Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance, or MANNA, commemorated the milestone on Thursday with partners, supporters, volunteers, and clients at its headquarters.
CEO Sue Daugherty toasted the event with an achievement: “We just received an accreditation as a medically tailored meal (MTM) provider. We are the ninth in the country to receive it and the only in Pennsylvania that ensures that the product that we are providing meets a high criteria.”
MANNA is still fighting for the medically tailored meals — made by 150 volunteers daily — to be covered by all insurance companies.
“This should be a mandated covered benefit, and until that’s a mandated covered benefit, MANNA will continue to be here to serve those who are not covered,” Daugherty added.
MANNA serves 1,600 households each week. A big part of its success over the years is the volunteers.
Among them is 52-year-old Jay Lassiter, of Cherry Hill, who helps prepare the medically tailored meals. Contributing to the preparation sometimes makes him emotional — as he used to be a client.
“It’s meaningful to me,” he said. “I have been HIV positive for over 30 years. If not from the disease, I should have died from the meds that they gave me for the disease, which actually made me really, really sick. It was during that time that MANNA actually nourished me during my darkest and sickest and loneliest hours.”
MANNA said it has provided more than 23 million medically tailored meals to more than 50,000 clients over the last 35 years — enough people to sell out the Wells Fargo Center two and a half times, and enough meals to feed every fan at 340 sold-out Eagles games.