Year in Review

As the year is wrapping up, let’s take a look back at what the Volunteer Department at Met Council has accomplished this year:

In January, volunteers from all over the city teamed up to sort through our donated clothing on MLK day.

One of our favorite volunteers, Monita, taught a cooking class to seniors.

For Passover, Met Council had many volunteer-run food distributions for struggling families.

A new program called the Senior Nutirtion Workshop was started in order to keep our seniors well informed about the food they were eating so that they could make healthy choices!

A senior fitness class was also started to help our seniors stay fit and active!

Lots of things were happening on the career services side too. From resume reviews to mock interviews, and even networking workshops!

Some of our best ongoing programs continued as well, such the Senior Lunch Program, which helps to provide a hot kosher lunch for seniors every week.

The Youth Enrichment Program took off this year, providing children in our temporary homeless shelter with fun and educational activities every week.

And with the warm weather, came many volunteer gardening projects! Almost every seniors home garden at Met Council got a make over!

In the fall we rembered 9/11 by having emergency preparedness workshops at our senior residences.

In the fall we also teamed up with UJA for an event called Care to Share, where volunteers were invited to donate extra food from their farmshares all over New York!

And most recently we had "Growing Together" projects in which multi-generational groups made windowsill herb gardens for the seniors at Met Council!

It's been a great year!

The New Face of the Volunteer Department

The faces of Met Council’s volunteer department have changed! We’re extremely happy to present this year’s three new AmeriCorps members – Irijah, Jessica, and Simone - who will be working hard with you, our wonderful volunteers, to better serve New Yorkers in poverty.

Irijah Stennett is excited about working with the Met Council. She has over 15 years of experience in volunteering and servicing communities in New York City and Washington, DC through health as well as educational programs. She believes, by providing opportunities to people in need, we will expand on relationships with local leaders as well as gain support from the citizens we serve. Irijah will be focused on volunteer opportunities out in Brooklyn. She is sitting outside my office and can be reached at IStennett@metcouncil.org

Jessica Cheng will be working on career readiness volunteer programming. She is really excited! Jessica is a recent graduate of The College of New Jersey, where she studied English and Political Economy. But her passion has always been for non-profits and community outreach initiatives. For the past year, Jessica worked as Advocacy and Communications intern for AARP New Jersey to create positive legislative changes for the older adult community and promote volunteerism for those over 50 years old. Jessica is sitting outside my office and can be found at jcheng@metcouncil.org

Simone Carvalho is excited to start her yearlong adventure as an AmeriCorps Volunteer Coordinator with the Met Council where she will be working on food, nutrition, and wellness volunteer programs. Simone graduated this past May from Rutgers University with a BS in Management and a minor in Anthropology. Besides trying to be socially and environmentally conscious in everything she does, she doesn’t take herself so seriously and has a great sense of humor and passion for food. Simone can be reached at SCarvalho@metcouncil.org

Update on Growing Together

You might remember reading about one of our new projects called "Growing Together" where volunteers team up with seniors to make indoor herb gardens just in time for winter. Who woulnd't enjoy the summery taste of basil on a gray winter day?

The project is a chance for intergenerational groups to work together on a project that enriches both their lives. People of different ages get to learn a little bit more about each other while also making an environmentally friendly herb garden (notice below how many of our plant containers are made using old soup cans). The herbs will promote healthy eating and cooking at home throughout the winter. And having something green to look at in contrast to the bare trees of winter will be nice too!

We're doing these projects at senior houses all over New York City, so if you'd like to join us contact volunteer@metcouncil.org

Thanksgiving Dinner Extravaganza

Met Council celebrated our annual Thanksgiving event where volunteer cook and serve a traditional turkey meal to low income seniors. We had over 30 volunteers to make sure that 60 seniors at two housing sites enjoyed a delicious meal with their neighbors.

This meal was made possible by the generous contribution of Monita Buchwald who designed, funded and cooked the dinner.

Thanksgiving Volunteering!

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to brighten someone’s day. Take a look at some photos of a recent volunteer group from Temple Shharay Tefila who spent a few hours decorating one of our seniors homes with Thanksgiving decorations made by children and by the volunteers. See if you can guess who made which ones!

A few weeks ago MVP (our young leadership group) had its first Cheers for Volunteers event of the season. The event was chaired by Andrea Berkman (in the picture sitting at the table up front) and after the event we asked her to share her thoughts. Here is what she had to say:

I recently became a member of MVP (Met Council’s Valuable Players); in fact, I believe I’m actually their rookie player right now. It’s a group that allows young people to volunteer their time in a more meaningful way by banding together to fight against poverty in New York City and the boroughs.

I actually got involved with Met Council through another organization – New York Cares – and have participated largely in the programs pertaining to Career Services and Job Readiness. This area is particularly interesting and important to me because I have been unemployed in my life and I can use that vantage point to bring myself closer to clients who are looking for work in this crazy New York environment.

Something new that I have started to do with MVP is Cheers for Volunteers. While helping people learn interview skills and how to network is gratifying – and ups my ever dwindling kitty of karma chips – it’s also nice to spend time with the other volunteers in an “off’ setting where we can all chat and spend time together in a less formal setting.

What could be better than drinks to get everyone chatty and bring a group closer together? Cheers for Volunteers is an event where people grab a drink and a bite after an event and socialize together. The chat can range from holiday plans and sports to topics pertaining to upcoming MVP event. It’s completely social and voluntary.

After my last Networking Workshop I, along with about 6 other volunteers and Met Council staff, went across the street for drinks and food. It was nice to engage with likeminded people who share a common goal of decreasing poverty in the city but not feel the need to spend the entire time discussing solutions to the problem in a formal setting.

The most special part of Cheers for Volunteers, at least for me, is knowing that I can surround myself with new people in New York whose common bond is the proactive way in which we chose to do something good and give of ourselves without seeming like yuppies or over-achieving-do-gooders. It’s something small, it’s something that isn’t time consuming, but it’s definitely something that will result in big changes for our community.

Join us! We would love to have you. Our next Cheers for Volunteers on Sunday December 11th is a Chanukah party for families that have been affected by domestic violence. If you are interested in signing up please e-mail sgreenberg@metcouncil.org

http://www.metcouncil.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Get_Involved_MVP

Shrinking the Nursing Home until it feels like a Home

A recent article in the New York Times article was written about a shift from large nursing institutions to smaller homier living settings referred to as "Green Houses."

"Just 10 residents live in each so-called Green House, which looks nothing like a traditional nursing home. The front door opens onto a large living and dining area; on one side is a hearth surrounded by upholstered chairs, and on the other is a long communal dining table where meals are served. An open kitchen faces the table, so caregivers can chat with elderly residents while preparing meals.

There are 117 Green Houses across the United States now, part of a quiet but intriguing effort to de-institutionalize elder care. The movement has its roots in the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act, which declared that residents of long-term care have the right to be free from abuse or neglect. Nursing homes across the country have tried a variety of strategies to become more 'resident-centered.'"

Met Council provides independent-living housing for seniors all over New York City. Now, in a city, it is very difficult to provide housing that is not in a large apartment building and so even an independent living building can have an institutional feel to it.

"The notion that elder care should be de-institutionalized is a popular one. According to a poll released in September by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 82 percent of pre-retirees (adults over age 50 who have not retired but plan to) and 78 percent of retirees are somewhat or very concerned about being in an institutional environment that is not as comfortable as a home.

'Loneliness, helplessness and boredom are the three plagues of nursing homes,' Mr. Jenkens said. 'Arguably, much of the institutionalized practice induced this.'"

Considering these problems, smaller housing units seem like a good solution. The article goes on to list the results of a poll conducted which interviewed seniors who previously had been in a large nursing home and then moved to a "green house."

"...each day they get 24 minutes more of direct and personalized care and 1.5 hours more of nursing staff time than those living in traditional nursing homes. Residents say they feel like they have deeper relationships with the staff, and family members report higher satisfaction with the physical environment, privacy, their own autonomy, health care and meals. Employees, too, report less stress. The turnover rate is significantly lower than in a traditional nursing home. Green House certified nursing assistants are paid on average about 5 percent more than those in institutional settings.

Even if this model of elder care turns out to be impractical on a large scale, Ms. Wells said, 'we can learn a lot from what the Green House is doing and can translate these methods into things that existing nursing homes can use.'"

As an organization that provides housing for the elderly we can learn a lot from this article too. And as a volunteer coordinator reading this, it is clear to see that when something like an extra 24 minutes of direct and personalized care makes a huge difference in someone's life--the kind of direct and personal attention can also be provided by wonderful, caring volunteers who join our seniors in recreational activities!

You can check out the full article here.