PBHA’s Pets as Therapy is a group dedicated to serving the elderly residents of Vernon Hall Nursing Home. Every Sunday afternoon, volunteers bring a dog from the Harvard Square area to visit Vernon Hall residents. In doing so, volunteers provide companionship to residents and enable them to spend therapeutic time with the dogs. Most residents rarely receive visitors and always look forward to seeing us! We are currently expanding with the Elderly Affairs Committee to offer more activities for the residents, including art and exercise classes. For more information and a chance to personally brighten somebody’s day, please contact Veronica Shi (vshi@fas.harvard.edu) or Kylee Clyatt (kjclyatt@fas.harvard.edu).
Vernon Hall is one of the programs of the Elderly Affairs Committee. Volunteers visit nursing home patients together as a group and entertain the elderly individuals by playing exciting rounds of Bingo and painting residents’ fingernails. There are also opportunities for one-on-one interaction through personal visits and games like checkers and Scrabble. We are also looking at ways to expand our activities repertoire this year! The Vernon Hall nursing home is a 10-15 minute walk from Harvard Square. We volunteer from approximately 1:45pm-4pm on Saturday afternoons, including walking time. Contact Daniel Lage (dlage@fas) or Taylor LiCausi (tlicausi@fas) for more information.
Alzheimers Buddys for the Arts is one of the programs of the Elderly Affairs Committee. This program pairs students with Alzheimer’s Disease residents at Cadbury Commons, an assisted living retirement facility. Students and their elderly buddies will work on art projects together at Cadbury Commons and also go on some group art exercusions (e.g. Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) to engage the cognitive abilities of those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Cadbury Commons is about a 10 minute walk from the Quad. We volunteer from about 3pm-5pm on Sunday afternoons. Contact Kevin Zhang (kyzhang@fas) or Kyle Chen (kylechen@fas) for more information.
PBHA’s Elderly 121 is one of the programs of the Elderly Affairs Committee. One-to-one volunteers are paired with one elderly citizen (although volunteers may opt to be matched up with more than one elderly individual) with whom the volunteer visits weekly at a time mutually convenient for the student and the elderly citizen. 1-2-1 participants have the liberty of deciding what activities he or she would like to carry out with the elderly individual (activities could constitute simply conversing or taking the senior citizen on a leisurely stroll). Student volunteers should plan on forging a strong, personal relationship with his or her elderly friend. Contact Sanjin Tunovic (stunovic@fas) or Yuting Chiang (ypchiang1987@gmail.com) for more information.
