TORONTO – With the charitable focus during the holidays traditionally on kids, some seniors’ organizations are encouraging people not to forget about the seniors.
“There are a lot of isolated seniors that maybe don’t have family members or friends and they go without a Christmas,” said Kelly Friesen, from one such organization, Seniors Services Society, in New Westminster, B.C.
Friesen has been putting on the “Be a Santa to a Senior” program for five years.
A tree is set up with ornaments with the first names of seniors on them. People take the ornament, purchase the gift and put it in a box with the ornament attached. Home Instead picks up the items, then volunteers wrap and deliver the gifts.
This local organization and others like it are teaming up with Home Instead Seniors Care, an international organization that provides at-home services, to spread Christmas cheer to vulnerable seniors.
According to Statistics Canada, almost 400,000 seniors were living in collective dwellings in 2011, and 83.9 per cent of those were living alone.
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Recipient Jim Marshall, is one of these seniors. The 87-year-old felt fortunate when he received a gift from the program last year. “There in my retirement, Seniors Services has been looking after me with meals and it’s quite friendly.”
The group delivered 140 gifts in 2012, and its goal for this year is 200.
Programs like this one aren’t confined to the west, Home Instead Seniors Care is also running local programs in Ontario this holiday season.
The organization’s Waterloo, Ont. office had a goal to provide a gift for each person whose name was put forward on Christmas morning.
“We more than exceeded that goal,” said an enthusiastic Kathleen Needles, Community Service Representative at Home Instead Seniors Care in Waterloo, Ont.
“People were thrilled.”
The group has already collected the gifts and will hold a “wrapping party” on Thursday with help from the local Kids Ability school, a school for children with special needs, who decorated all the bags.
And donors weren’t skimping on the gifts, either. “We often see people giving things that are quite nice. Coats, housecoats, slippers, gloves, scarves, bath kits. They’re actually getting really nice presents,” said Bruce Mahony, Managing Director of the Toronto office.
Mahony says he feels a sense of duty to seniors in the community. “The purpose is really just to give back a little. It doesn’t do a lot for us from a marketing stand-point, but it’s just something we feel we need to do.”
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