So my partner, Cristel, and I started a little late with this project because of all the requirements that the volunteer places required. But, we finally found Aegis Living, which gave us a quick orientation and let us get started as soon as we needed. The activity director let us have an hour orientation on Wednesday and we volunteered for our first day on Saturday. It was a really fun experience and we did a lot of cool things with the elderly residents that lived there.
The first thing that we did was set up their activity room in a circle of chairs for their morning exercise. We had another volunteer helping us so we got done pretty quickly. After we were done setting up the chairs and weight balls we were able to chat with some of the residents in the home. Most of the residents living there suffer from dementia, which is a disease that causes you to loose your memory over time. One of the residents we chatted with, in a picture below, shared us her story. She is unable to store short term memory, so throughout the conversation she repeated the same thing telling us, for example about her son that is a police officer and her late husband who was a butcher. It was really sad to see that people suffer from this disease. It was a good thing to know that she does still hold her long term memories with her family and husband. It really opened our eyes to know that maybe one day we won't be able to remember what we did 15 minutes ago.
So Cristel and I joined the residents for a fun exercise session and
sing-a-long. It was so much fun to see the residents doing their cute
stretches and working out! After we were done, the home needed the room
to be set up for their special surprise Mother's Day luncheon with all
the residents. They invited all the families to come and spend time with
their parents and they had a special buffet. We wiped down the tables
and set up the placemats, silverware, and flowers. After we were done
setting up, we had about 15 minutes left so we were allowed to walk
around and see the rest of the home. This was what we did for our first
day of volunteering for Aegis Living!
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| This is the front lobby of the nursing home |
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| This is what we set up for the resident's exercise |
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| This is one of the residents that we spoke with |
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| These are the tables we set-up for the Mother's Day luncheon |
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6 comments:
I love this idea of volunteer work and I respect you guys for taking the time to help out the elderly! Many times, the elderly are neglected and not acknowledged and taken care of enough and I think it was a great idea for you guys to go and make them feel important and cared for!
What Nancy said. The elderly tend to be ignored and neglected and spending time with them is probably nice. We all need someone to talk to, right?
Also, on account of them being alive much longer than we have, and in a different time period than we have lived, older people usually have some amazing stories to tell. Whether it's about traveling or war time, or more simple stories of their life, it's almost always going to be interesting and draw you in. They're a piece of history, when you think about it. First hand accounts of what used to be...
Seems like you had fun, hope you did.
...You go glen coco.
I think that volunteering in a eldery home seems like a very good learning experience. They are able to tell you a lot of stories and you can learn from them a first hand account of the effects of a memory disease. I think that volunteering in an elderly home is also very important since, like what Nancy and Corrina said, the elderly are not given enough attention. Some people living in the home may not always have family to visit them and care for them regularly, so it is nice to give those others more attention than they usually have.
Neglect in care homes is very common yet unheard of, so seeing that the people living in the home are being taken care of well is calming. I've seen many videos of the elderly being mistreated in these homes, so volunteering is very important to give those people living there positive interaction.
i agree with the comments above. And we people should not forget of elderly people and take care of them because they are our people and we going to get to tha part of life and people are going to take care of us. And other thing is that if we have grandparents to not forget about them and just take care of them like they did at some point of life.
I think what you did for the elderly was such a kindly gester. These people could never get enough help and it's always better to have more to volunteer and help them live a better life. By the way that home looks really nice good job with your work.
That is so sweet that you went to help the elderly, often many of them are placed there due to the unreasonable neglect by their own kids or relatives. Its really sweet that this organization had something planned for the mothers there. Its true that many elderly suffer from short term-memory loss, or Alzheimer's, I believe and its really sad because all the good memories they had are forgotten, unless you give a full description and that depends on how far the disease reaches. Really sweet of you guys to help!
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