Luke Jovanovic spent his senior year at Duke University delivering more than meals. Between packing boxes, running route sheets, and greeting drivers, Luke found the thing plenty of Duke students miss: a real connection to the city outside the "bubble." Now a graduate, he's got one regret — that he didn't find Meals on Wheels Durham sooner.
May 2026 Duke University graduate Luke Jovanovic’s first volunteering experience serving older adults began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Living in New York City during his senior year, Jovanovic’s high school allowed students to participate in community service. Jovanovic volunteered with Invisible Hands to deliver groceries to vulnerable adults and homebound seniors. Older adults requested groceries via call center or through the Invisible Hands app, and volunteers would choose which deliveries they could fulfill, he says.
Every day, Jovanovic and his friends picked up two or three orders of groceries and delivered them around the city, he says.
And senior year of Duke, I found I had extra time on my hands,” Jovanovic says. “I wanted to give that back in a way, and Meals on Wheels Durham seemed like a similar equivalent. I’m very glad that I volunteered, because I had a great time.
Jovanovic says he started volunteering as an inside helper at MOWD in November 2025. Inside helpers assist with operations inside the Ross Road building between 8 and 11 a.m., including expediting meals to delivery drivers, packing meals, managing route sheets, and unloading meals from food delivery trucks. He says he continued volunteering all the way through graduation weekend.
Jovanovic says he found a welcoming community in other volunteers.
“It was super easy to keep coming back,” he says, “because everyone was super nice and it made the time spent very rewarding, to give back but also enjoy doing it.”
Jovanovic says he feels that volunteering at MOWD helped him escape the “Duke Bubble” — a term to describe the self-imposed isolation of Duke students and staff on campus who do not engage with the city of Durham. This gap can leave Durham and Duke feeling like separate worlds. It's something Duke's own Community Affairs department is actively working to close within the city they share, and Jovanovic sees volunteering as one of the simplest ways to help bridge it.
In Jovanovic’s case, he describes a “crisis of meaning” that makes him, and other students, wonder what the value of volunteering produces. He says he is lucky to have volunteered while he was in high school to understand the social and mental stakes serving older adults reveals.
I feel like having an outlet, like a nonprofit, is a great way to give back,” he says. “To give yourself a little bit of grace and understanding that you’re not just doing everything for yourself, and you’re giving back to others.
Most of the volunteers at MOWD are retired individuals or older adults who are available on weekday mornings and early afternoons.
Jovanovic says there may be two barriers that deter students from volunteering. One, he says, is the lack of distributed information about the organization.
“I didn’t even know Meals on Wheels Durham existed until I started digging in the fall,” he says. “Granted, once I started looking, I found it pretty easily, but sometimes you need to get in front of students for them to really realize it.”
Two, access to transportation can prevent students from volunteering as well, he says. Duke’s campus is in closer proximity to the Ross Road building, but for schools like North Carolina State University or The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, accessibility can prove to be more of a challenge. Even with a closer campus, Jovanovic says, first-year Duke students are strongly discouraged from having a car to begin with.
To other Duke students, Jovanovic says MOWD is a great opportunity to give back to the community. The MOWD digital interface makes signing up for volunteer shifts simple and the Ross Road location is not far from campus, he says.
I wish I discovered it earlier,” Jovanovic says. “I’m going to miss it.