Call a Senior Citizen for 20-Minutes?

Our friends over at social actions sent me this link:

http://my.socialactions.com/forum/topics/phone-pal

Would you call a senior citizen for 20 minutes to remind them that there are people in this world that still care about them?

Here's the repost:

PHONE-PAL

Often the senior population in our society gets ignored. What's up with that? They have tons of interesting stories to tell and remember a time before lattes, and had to walk uphill both ways to school. I personally have no idea what either of those experiences are like, and I bet it would be interesting to hear about!

We have a few seniors in our housing sites that are lonely, and we don't want them to feel ignored anymore.

We need volunteers who want to hear about all those interesting stories by spending a little time each week on the phone with these seniors. I bet they'd even be interested in hearing about whatever interesting stories you have to tell as well!

Contact Stefanie Greenberg at sgreenberg@metcouncil.org or 212.453.6916

I think it would be great! What do you think?

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/superchango/

Comments

[ben rigby]

Would they mind hearing from a different person each week/day? If there's a negative experience (someone who calls who is just plain crazy), or at least a chance of this happening, should we run the program anyway?

How do the seniors' numbers get in the system. How do they get out? How do they provide feedback on the call?

Great idea. Seems like there are some logistical hurdles that would require an organization or individual to manage the program...and therefore to have some funding.

[Abbie]

Thanks for the re-post! And thanks for your support! We've already had a great response for this.

Our organization, Met Council, works in NYC, and the seniors that we are trying to find friends for live in housing sites that we run, so everything is screened through us. But those are definitely issues that would arise on a larger scale. I wonder how that could be set up?

http://www.metcouncil.org/site/PageServer