Coronavirus: Orange Order helping to bring hot meals to vulnerable people in rural areas

David Swann, deputy district master, explained how the scheme, which began on Friday, has snowballed: “Volunteers from the lodges approached people in the area who are living on their own and asked if they’d be interested in us bringing them a hot meal.

“We’ve earmarked in and around 120, 130 dinners.

“We’d been hoping to do it a couple of days a week but we didn’t realise there was as much need. We thought there might be 60 or 70 people, not 130 to do.

“The meals are being prepared by a couple of volunteer cooks, girls that are furloughed out of the local hotel.

“They’re preparing the meals in one of the Orange halls and they’ll be distributed around the district by volunteers out of each private lodge.

“It’s covering Mountfield to Gillygooley to Edenderry to Cappagh. It’s a very rural kind of an area, you’ve 13 lodges in the district.”

David, a member of Killyburragh LOL 200, said the district is using money from the Community Foundation to establish the hot meals scheme.

He said: “We’re using the money to buy the raw materials, what’s being cooked.

“All of the cooks are voluntary, the people who are delivering it are voluntary.

“We’re hoping to do it two days a week, we still might be able to.

“I’ve applied to Omagh and District Council for a wee bit of funding.”

As well as hot meals he said lodges were offering any kind of practical help they could: “PPE is being delivered, there’s home visits, telephone calls, bringing bits of groceries.

“It’s just being in contact, having that different face coming up the lane.

“They can speak to you and tell you what they need, post delivered, coal got.”