Neighbors Care Alliance
Lend A Hand Senior Assistance, Inc.
Lend A Hand Senior Assistance, Inc. (LAH) is a non-profit coalition of 12 central Tucson neighborhoods and a proud Neighbors Care Alliance partner. We serve older adults age 60 or older, as well as younger individuals with disabilities—and have provided no cost services since 2006.
Many seniors who would prefer to live independently are faced with the need to move to a care facility or to live with a family member far from their community. Trained volunteers from Lend A Hand help seniors stay comfortably and safely in their homes, and age in place as our neighbors as a vital part of our communities. We, at LAH, are particularly pleased that we made it through the pandemic without having to stop our major services. LAH currently has 125 clients and 57 active volunteers who receive free services like transportation, assistance with running errands, and twice monthly produce delivery. While we found it necessary to change our friendly visits into friendly calls, each client was assigned to a volunteer caller to ensure that isolation would not impact our neighbors’ wellbeing. Our commitment to ensuring that our neighbors have access to nutritious food meant we also changed the way we delivered community lunches. We transitioned from in-person lunches at a church hall to delivering lunches to our participants’ homes. And believe it or not, our numbers for lunch delivery doubled! For the past 38 months, we delivered lunches once a month— most were prepared by volunteers—to an average of 80 clients. This June, we all celebrated when we were able to go back to in-person lunches. The smiles were big! We restarted our twice monthly in-person exercise program as well, and our neighbors are prioritizing their health. Lend A Hand worked hard to keep going during the pandemic and meet the needs of our clients during that difficult time. We feel lucky that we made it! We now face another big challenge as our Coordinator will retire at the end of this year. We are looking
for a committed and dynamic person who will lead us into the future—and we hope that Tucson can help us to find that person! Do you know someone who is a “people person” with dedication to helping and empowering people, organizing projects, overseeing human services, and communicating with both passion and healthy boundaries? If so, we invite you to share information about our Coordinator opportunity: Lend A Hand Senior Assistance | Tucson (lahseniorhelp.org). People who are interested in coordinating the Lend a Hand programming (enrolling and training volunteers, coordinating transportation, overseeing program services, communicating with the LAH Board, and representing the organization with the Neighbors Care Alliance) may also reach out to Vicki Mills at vamills@ arizona.edu or (520) 248-8621 for more information.
September/October 2023, Never Too Late | Page 31
Pima Council on Aging
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online