Hot lunches delivered Monday through Friday by volunteers may be the only nutritious meals some Williamson County seniors eat all week.

The local Meals on Wheels program is operated by Williamson-Burnet County Opportunities, a nonprofit organization that provides food, preschool education, emergency assistance and affordable housing to low-income residents in Williamson and Burnet counties. According to the organization, Meals on Wheels currently serves 521 Williamson County residents age 60 and older who, for an array of reasons, cannot make their own meals.

Theres not an income criteria for eligibility, although a lot of the folks are poor, a lot of folks are in poor health, and a lot of them are both, said Brad Stutzman, Meals on Wheels supporter.

The program centers on serving food to seniors in their homes or at congregate centers in Georgetown, Leander, Round Rock, Taylor and Marble Falls. Getting healthy food to seniors is a key priority, said Christopher Douglas, director of senior nutrition for Meals on Wheels.

Our meals are not the frozen industrial meals. Ours are home-cooked meals, he said. If I were to set them side by side and say ... which one would you want your parents to have? It would be very clear.

About 40 percent of the funding for Meals on Wheels comes from the federal government, 40 percent from local city and county governments and 20 percent from donations and grants, Douglas said.

For the first time in its history, the local Meals on Wheels program was forced to put clients on a waiting list last year, but recovered by November.

It was like a perfect storm, Douglas said. You had a downturn in the economy, the [federal] budget sequestration process, donations dry up and then the food prices spike all at the same time. We really had no choice.

The program relies on volunteers to transport meals using gas money from their own pockets. Douglas said Meals on Wheels aims to build partnerships so it can continue to serve an aging population.

For the community as a whole, it makes sense to keep seniors in their home as long as possible, as long as they are safe, because the cost is so much lower to all of us when we do that, Douglas said. We are on the cusp of seeing a huge wave of people coming in who will need these services, and more than ever we are going to need volunteers both individuals and businesses to stand behind the program.