Participants at the Saturday Dragon Boat event in Celoron will have an opportunity to have a nourishing breakfast while helping provide home-delivered meals to hundreds of local senior citizens served by Jamestown Meals on Wheels.

For the second time, Jamestown Meals on Wheels will be partnering with the Chautauqua Lake Dragon Boat Race in Celoron. The event, which is the third annual event in Celoron, is a community event that aims to bring awareness and raise money to support Chautauqua Lake.

Jamestown Meals on Wheels will have breakfast available from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. in the Celoron Park pavilion. Pancakes, sausage, home fries and more will be available at a price of $7 per adult, or $5 for a child under age 12.

Beverage and pastry will be available for $3. Coffee or bottled water will be available for $1. Local businesses have donated goods to be sold at the breakfast.

“This breakfast is an extension of our popular and successful pancake breakfast event we’ve held at the World Series of Cars each year for more than 25 years,” said Barrie Yochim, executive director of Jamestown Meals on Wheels. “We are thrilled that we will be back for a second year, because our first event last year went so well, and was so much fun.”

The all-day event itself consists of dragon boat racing where teams each race three times to advance to the afternoon race finals. Dragon boats originated in China more than 2,000 years ago, and dragon boat racing is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.

Money raised from the Meals on Wheels breakfast go to help pay for meal delivery to senior citizens in southern and central Chautauqua County who cannot pay for their meals, or who can pay only a small amount. All money raised from the breakfast is even more important this year, Yochim said, because the organization can no longer start individuals right away on the food-delivery program due to lack of available money.

“We still continue to have a waiting list for services,” he said. “As we raise the needed funds to pay for essential meals, we can bring people off the waiting list and get them the meals they need.”

Yochim thanks all the organizers of the dragon boat event for including Meals on Wheels again this year, he said. The Chautauqua Lake Association, Village of Celoron and Chautauqua Region Community Foundation have been important in linking Meals on Wheels with the dragon boat event.

Jamestown Meals on Wheels relies on fund-raising events like this pancake breakfast to raise essential funds to get meals into the hands of area senior citizens. Meals on Wheels also receives funding from Chautauqua County Office For the Aging, as well as other individual contributors. Meals on Wheels is a United Way community partner.

Meals on Wheels of the Jamestown Area provides heatable and cold home-delivered meals five days a week in half of Chautauqua County. The suggested cost for home delivery of one heatable meal and one cold meal is $9 per day. For either a heatable or cold meal, the suggested cost is $5 per day. Meals on Wheels can also provide ready-to-heat frozen meals for use on weekends.

WCA Hospital prepares meals for Meals on Wheels recipients in southern Chautauqua County from the hospital’s Jones Memorial Health Center kitchen.

Meals are delivered by a combination of paid drivers and volunteers from the community. Some Meals on Wheels volunteers are from the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program.

Any Chautauqua County senior citizen can receive home meal delivery, if eligible for the program. Meals on Wheels of the Jamestown Area delivers to the southern half of Chautauqua County.

Sinclairville 76ers provides home-delivered meals to participants in the towns of Charlotte, Cherry Creek, Gerry and Ellington, and in Cassadaga, Stockton and Lily Dale. Dunkirk-Fredonia Meals on Wheels provides home-delivered meals to participants along the Lake Erie lakeshore from Brocton to Silver Creek, including the towns of Hanover and Villenova, and in Forestville.

For more information about Meals on Wheels, call 488-9119.