This story is written by Katie, the True North AmeriCorps Member with Duluth Community School Collaborative Myers-Wilkins. For their Global Youth Service Day project, the youth at her site decided they wanted to visit with elderly folks who do not get a lot of visitors. Enjoy this touching story about how these youth brought some new fun energy into the lives of the elderly at St. Benedictine Nursing Home. Nice job facilitating this Katie! I bet the residents at St. Benedictine really enjoyed the visit.
In gearing up for our Global Youth Service Project we talked a lot about our community and what it means to be a citizen of a community. We narrowed it down to a few different groups within our community that may need some extra support and ultimately settled on the Elderly as a group we felt we were able to help. When talking about things we could do for them, a student hesitantly threw out the idea that we could spend time with them. As their instructor I was really struck by that idea, recognizing that many older people do feel lonely, especially those in nursing home facilities where many do not get visitors. We decided that that was a great idea.
In preparation, we talked about the older people in our own lives. We did a writing activity where the students were asked to identify an older person in their life that was important to them, why they were important to them, and what are some fun thing that they did together. The kids had some really thoughtful responses. Some even got emotional and it was hard for them to write. I was surprised to find that a lot of them and little experience in interacting with elderly adults.
After prepping a bit more we visited St. Benedictine Nursing Home where they had organized a basket making project working with elderly. The elderly we worked with didn’t have strong motor skills and weren’t able to communicate very well. Some of the students were very hesitant to intermingle with them but they overcame it and were on very good behavior. They worked along side them to create baskets and paper grass. Afterwards we reflected on how sometimes you may feel uncomfortable but people are people and its okay to be uncomfortable sometimes.
We wrote Thank you cards to thank them for their time, I was very proud of how they handled themselves and of the thoughtful cards that they created.