Phone Buddies

 The organization that I lead, has started on a new program where we contact our senior members to see how they are. As in most communities, recreational programs for seniors have dropped off considerably, in fact down zero in my area. As the lockdown orders became longer, as a board we knew we needed to keep in touch with our members. So at one of our meetings, some members of the Board who had been longterm members talked about a program the Board ran in the early 2000s. We examined the idea and asked the City if it would work with us. They agreed and our Phone Buddies pilot was started in July. 

We started by getting a list of our members who were over 80 and then three of us divided them up and created a standard script and started phone them. We asked how they were doing if they had a social circle, and what programs they wanted to have open first when we moved back to a new normal. We had over 140 members in that age group so we had about 40 plus members to phone. The pilot went well, the seniors were happy that we had phoned and gave us some good ideas. I was certainly impressed by the positive attitude of this group.

We have now expanded the program to our 70 to 80-year-olds and have recruited three new volunteers who are phoning that group. If this phase is successful we will expand it to the 60 to 70-year-olds. That will require some work as we have over 1000 members and the majority are in the 60-70-year-old age group.

We are excited about the program and how it is impacting the seniors we contact. For the majority, they have a social network that they can rely on to help them, but there is a small group that needs to be put in touch with agencies that can help them. Without our program, they would have been lost in the shuffle.