The conversation with retirees about volunteering was so revealing and inspiring that Stacy Ashton and the CVC team knew they needed to find a way to continue it.
So they rustled up some cash, formed some partnerships, and set out to find retiree volunteers to tell their stories.
And what stories they told.
Charlie is in his eighties – though you wouldn’t know it – and volunteers four days a week at his local Senior’s Centre. He belongs to the Knights of Columbus and visits hospital patients and “shut-ins”, leads the Social Club in his apartment building (last year they raised and donated $10,000 to charity) and takes particular pride in their annual free-beer-and-pizza party. And, after all of that, he’s still got time to take his wife dancing.
Joan started out with The Ramblers, a local group of “gals who met once a week to walk a couple of miles and socialize.” Then she started going on bus trips and later began organizing them. They go to great restaurants – The Fish House, The Cannery, Cloud 9 – casinos, the Racetrack, and daytrips to the US. Joan volunteers on the board and committees of the community centre she belongs to, and loves her independence. She mentioned to her son recently that it had been a couple of weeks since they talked, and he said “Well, if you were home once in a while to pick up your phone, we’d talk more often!”
Beatrice has been volunteering since she was a teenager. “During the war, another girl and I used to organize dances to raise money to buy cigarettes – can you believe it?! – for the boys overseas.” Fundraising is second nature to her, and she calls a mean bingo, too – when she’s not Skyping her grandchildren and raving about her new Apple computer.
These are just snippets from tales to come – in the Retiree Storytelling Project ten (or more!) retiree volunteers will tell us their stories and the life lessons they’ve learned – and they tell a much different story about retirement and volunteerism than the ones we might expect.
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Do you have a great story of a retiree volunteering in the community? Are you a retiree? Please tell us your story in the comments!
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