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For Chris McCune, working with seniors is a mission much more than it is a job. She’s the regional services director for Care Connection for Aging Services, the umbrella agency that operates the Rivers Crossing Life Center in Osceola. Chris began her career in senior services at the Rivers Crossing Life Center, and her powerful stories remind us why senior centers like these are so impactful.

“The first time I worked with our home delivered meal program, I was hooked,” Chris said. “I saw first-hand the devastating effects of food insecurity, and I experienced the life-changing difference made in a person’s life and medical condition simply by providing good nutrition. From that moment on, I never considered another occupation.”

Rivers Crossing Life Center began its partnership with Ozarks Food Harvest in 2015 when the senior center moved to its new building, complete with a commercial kitchen suited for preparing hot meals. The center provides everything seniors need to live with maximum independence, dignity and respect. Chris calls it a “one-stop shop” for seniors to meet their needs – one of the most crucial being nutrition.

Good nutrition can help combat medical issues, but due to fixed incomes and mobility challenges, many seniors find it difficult to access the food they need to thrive. To help keep seniors in St. Clair County healthy, Rivers Crossing Life Center serves hot meals four days a week at the senior center and offers home-delivered meals to people who qualify.

Chris said it’s hard to choose just one moment when she realized the senior center was making a difference in someone’s life. Sometimes she thinks about the elderly woman who needed help carrying her meals inside, and when volunteers opened the fridge, they realized all she had was an apple and some water. Or she may recall the gentleman facing medical issues and using an oxygen machine who, after a few months of meals from the senior center, gained ten pounds and no longer needed oxygen assistance. “A meal made that difference,” explained Chris.

Ozarks Food Harvest is proud to play a part in senior nutrition through a partnership with Rivers Crossing Life Center, delivering food to the senior center each month. “The extra food from Ozarks Food Harvest allows the menus to be enhanced and for the center to serve a wider variety of produce, meat, bread and dairy,” Chris shared. “The things you provide fill in the missing places and make the meals more enjoyable. It’s good not only from a nutritional standpoint, but sometimes just for the joy it brings somebody.”

Seniors have plenty of reasons for joy at Rivers Crossing Life Center. The senior center’s “one-stop shop” services are designed to provide socialization, exercise, nutrition, independence and more to create positive aging experiences for seniors in St. Clair County. In addition to meals, the senior center offers a plethora of services like recreation, case management, social activities and even telephone reassurance programs for homebound seniors.

The good work being done at Rivers Crossing Life Center is making a daily difference for seniors in St. Clair County, and Ozarks Food Harvest is proud to be a part of that hope. To learn more about the activities at Rivers Crossing Life Center, you can visit goaging.org/services/local-centers/st-clair-county-senior-center/st-clair-osceola-senior-center/