Caring for Our Community
Caring for Our Community
Caring for Our Community Together
This section is all about how various people care for our community, in order to make it a better place. Some of these items are about what Massanutten Resort is doing, but we’d also love to feature things that area residents are doing. Got a tip? Let us know!
March 17, 2021 - Massanutten Meals Delivery Update
Early in the pandemic, Massanutten Resort began a free food delivery program to area families in need. The program continues to this day.
“We recognized early on that there were area residents who could use a hand,” said Mark Litz, who oversees food and beverage services at the resort. “We had few guests, plenty of talented staff, and lots of supplies. We saw it as a way to use existing resources to help the community.”
Meals are delivered to people in the Massanutten area with health or other challenges that make it more difficult for them to access the stores. Most are elderly, but there are also some younger recipients with mobility issues.
Meals are delivered once per week. Each delivery contains the equivalent of four fully-prepared meals. “The majority of people we deliver to live alone,” Litz said, “so that’s four meals for them.”
Litz said that although a typical week’s menu choice originally involved tried-and-trues like pasta or meatloaf, with dessert and a loaf of fresh-baked bread, the culinary staff likes to mix things up and recipients appreciate that. “I use my 80-year-old father as a guinea pig,” he said. “We recently did an enchilada casserole, and he loved it. Another time, it was beans and franks – we have a really good provider of local beef hot dogs, and our staff came up with the idea. I thought it might bomb, but Dad loved it and everyone else did too. I’ve learned that what I might think might be wrong might actually be exactly right.”
There’s currently a waitlist to join the program, but the resort adds more recipients as other recipients drop off the list.
The resort also delivers 100 loaves of home-made bread weekly to the Elkton Area United Services (EAUS) food bank. Deliveries were temporarily suspended recently due to renovations at EAUS but resumed on March 9. EAUS distributes half to clients in-house and provides the other half to another area food bank.
Although the food and bread are made by the culinary staff, delivery personnel are all volunteers. Some are Massanutten-area residents, and others are members of the Massanutten Resort/Great Eastern staff.
For more information on the program, contact community@massresort.com.
February 26, 2021 - Arctic Plunge and 4K on the Fairway
At Massanutten Resort, we take great pride in supporting the efforts of those who want to make our community and Rockingham County a better place. One of our favorite ways to do that is to host fun events that are open to the community, with proceeds going to worthy organizations.
That’s the idea behind our annual Arctic Plunge and the 4K on the Fairway. Both events will provide support to Therapeutic Adventures, which provides opportunities for those with disabilities, illnesses, and other health needs to experience the outdoors through camps, adaptive sports clinics, retreats, races, and service projects. During the winter season, they provide adaptive ski/snowboard lessons here at Massanutten.
If you haven’t seen these before, the 4K on the Fairway is, as you might expect, a 4K footrace open to all ages (including those in strollers, assuming a registrant is at the helm). The course is essentially the cart path of the Front Nine at Mountain Greens. The Polar Plunge is… well, cold and wet: a plunge (or, for younger participants, a wade) in the OUTDOOR pool at Woodstone. The Plunge starts Friday, March 5, at 6 pm; the 4K is on Saturday, March 6, beginning at 9:30 am. You can do one or both – and all participants will be entered into a raffle for cool prizes (additional tickets available for participants and non-participants alike).
As you might expect, some Covid-related restrictions apply. To learn more and register, visit https://www.massresort.com/play/live-events/snow-moon-fest/.
January 4, 2021 - Celebrating Special Community Members!
Massanutten Resort is asking citizens of our community to nominate someone who is either in need, has gone above and beyond in some way, or has a special story to share. A special selection committee will review the stories and select 10 winners who will receive a $500 Massanutten Resort Everything Gift Card.* To nominate someone, click here, tell us their story in 250 words or less and how they would benefit from or use a $500 Massanutten Resort Everything Gift Card.
The deadline is Friday, January 8. To learn more and see the rules, visit massresort.com/newyearscheers.
October 23, 2020 - Massanutten Food Delivery Program to resume in early November
After a roughly one-month hiatus, Massanutten Resort’s complimentary Food Delivery Program will resume on November 10.
When we launched the Program in late Spring, there was still a lot that was unknown about the pandemic – including precisely how it spread and how significant its impact would be on our region. But we did know this: there were people whose places of employment had shut down and others who, due to health or transportation issues, found food shopping difficult.
It goes without saying that no organization in our county, whether for- or not-for-profit, can feed everybody. But we did see a way to help our neighbors by lightening their load a bit. Thanks to the hard work of Shenandoah Provisions (Great Eastern’s culinary wing) and the willingness of Massanutten community members and resort staffers to volunteer as delivery drivers, we were able to deliver hundreds of complete, wholesome prepared meals to neighbors in need.
As the picture about the impacts of the pandemic on Rockingham County came into sharper focus, we took a breather in late September to evaluate the program, its impact, and the best path forward. We’re ready to resume.
If you – or someone you know - can benefit from the program due to financial or health need, please encourage them to click here to take a brief survey. Persons without computer access can call the office at 540-437-3372, beginning on October 28th. Folks can also contact the program via community@massresort.com.
July 29, 2020 - Rep. Tony Wilt Had Some Nice Things To Say About The Food Delivery Program
July 21, 2020 - Community Involvement – Part 1
A question that surfaced recently is how we at Massanutten are engaged in the community and what our key areas of focus are. It’s a good question that we’ll try to answer.
First, as a Resort, we tend to focus on programs first, setting a strong foundation prior to identifying a specific cause. A few of our programs include:
- Monday Night Madness
- United Way Month of Caring
- Summer & Fall Festivals
The festivals, by the way, are all benefits. All proceeds beyond expenses are provided to the title agency or organization.
In terms of causes, we tend to focus on three areas:
- Community Strength & Food Availability - These programs are aimed at supporting people in need in our community.
- HR United Way – active supporter with Day of Caring, Month Long Giving Campaign
- EAUS - Active financial & volunteer support
- Massanutten Food Delivery Program
- Education & Extracurricular Program Support - These programs are aimed at helping ensure that area residents have access to good educations.
- The First Tee – Massanutten Resort Golf Professional Jason Crawford Board Member for Rockingham County 1st Tee
- Secondary Education- program and teaching support with On The Road Collaborative - afterschool enrichment & career education
- College Education – BRCC Foundation Board Member & 2020- 2021 Foundation Board Chair
- Skyline Adult Literacy – philanthropic support
May 2020: HELPING THE COMMUNITY
Massanutten’s Shenandoah Provisions division provides meals to the community; seeks volunteer drivers to boost reach.
When the Covid 19 shutdown appeared imminent, Massanutten Resort and Shenandoah Provisions, its Food and Beverage wing, and at least one MPOA Board member looked at the situation closely.
The resort has large, well-equipped commercial kitchens. It had a lot of inventory. It had talented culinary professionals. But because of the pandemic, it really didn’t have much in the way of customers. More importantly, there were people in the community who needed help.
“We realized that there were folks out there who might need some food assistance, said Mark Litz, Vice President of Operations for Great Eastern Purveyors, which operates Shenandoah Provisions. “The reasons might be due to job loss, or because they were in higher-risk categories for the disease and were trying to avoid public spaces like grocery stores, or something else. We knew we couldn’t feed everyone forever, but we did know we could take some of the pressure off.”
The solution became clear: utilize resort personnel and equipment, and provide prepared food deliveries to people who needed it.
The first week, meals were offered only within the Massanutten community itself, as a proof-of-concept. Generating leads through area social media pages, the program was then expanded outward into surround communities. Deliveries have been made as far south as Grottoes and Mt. Crawford, into Harrisonburg and to the eastern side of Elkton.
Each week, Shenandoah Provisions is offers a complete meal. Past offerings have included main courses like meat loaf, lasagna, and chicken pot pie. Each delivery comes with a half loaf of fresh homemade bread, a dessert and at least one side. Each delivery will feed a family of four, or a couple for two days.
Litz said the resort would like to double the number of days and deliveries, but the limiting factor is drivers. “We’re currently running once per week on Tuesdays, with an average of 50 deliveries each time,” he said. “Currently, all the drivers are resort employees. They have other jobs within the resort, but they volunteer their time for this. We’ve kept available deliveries to 50 so far because we’re struggling to find more drivers – and if community members wanted to volunteer, that would be a huge blessing. It could help us as much as double the reach.”
Persons wishing to volunteer, Litz said, can do so by emailing community@massresort.com.
Litz said reaction to the program has been heartwarming. “Recipients are so grateful,” he said. “And they’re not trying to get something for nothing – we’ve had people who contacted us who said “hey, I just went back to work. Can you give that meal to someone else who really needs it?”
He added that Shenandoah Provisions is looking into additional ways to help the community through the pandemic.
June 4, 2020
We expect to be expanding this program somewhat in the next few weeks. Several community members have joined us as volunteer drivers... for which we thank them! We could use a few more - let us know at community@massresort.com.
Meantime, here are some images of a recent delivery!
