Lifelong - Tara Jacobsen

Tara Jacobsen - Interview Transcript

So this our Well-Wish Note Project and it's really just that, sending wishes of well to our clients. So kind of like the idea of when you were a little kid and you got a lunchbox and you open it up and there's, you know, a note from mom, or your caregiver, whoever, and it just says like have a great day. It's really to extend that emotional support especially for our clients who may be isolated, or may not have as many connections with their community, this just really lets them know that there's someone there for them. And it's a great way for our community, our volunteers, and staff members to really connect with our clients in a creative way so yeah.

So what we have people do this is a really great social-distancing task. They can do it at their home or their office or wherever they are and make some really great well-wish notes and then send them to our Georgetown warehouse. And then from there we go through we put them into our grocery bags and then they get delivered to our clients. So sending them directly here is the perfect way to do it.

So we serve typically about 850 clients per week who get a grocery bag. Now during COVID-19 we're going upwards of about 1200 and so with those 1200 individuals not everybody is alike so we really wanna make sure that yeah we're sending out thoughtful greetings that can really, you know, apply to everyone, so not so specific that if someone got it they would maybe not connect with it as much, but really something that would bring joy to them.

Yeah, so we have a COVID emergency support page. It is, if you go to lifelong.org and go on the volunteer tab it will bring you to that you'll just have to do a couple of clicks, but it's pretty easy and then this is actually one of our off-site opportunities. We have a few different ways that people can get involved with us off-site and this is probably the one that I've been encouraging people to do the most because my ideal goal would to be sending these out every week. We've been trying to aim for monthLy and I think might increase to bi-weekly at this point but it would be great to send one out every week so.

Well I think one of the things that I've always found really impactful with this project is that it goes a lot further than I think people might even realize. That, you know, getting something especially you know now when we have our homebound seniors, folks in isolation who like cannot see anyone and even with our delivery driver, staff members and volunteers they're no longer going into our clients homes. I think not having any of that connection can be really really isolating and hard. So this connection piece is I think needed more than ever and I really think that, you know, volunteers who wanna give and support can really do a lot by just writing some nice things on a card. It definitely goes a long way in bringing joy and hope to someone.