Fort Myers Interfaith Volunteer
Caregivers Program
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 Services we routinely perform for the elderly include: transportation to
doctors and to nursing homes to visit loved ones, shopping, meal preparation,
correspondence, friendly visiting, respite, light housekeeping, minor home
repairs, and limited yard and lawn service. Dream teams (4 or more volunteers)
tackle what would appear to be insurmountable projects for one. Our volunteers
build wheelchair ramps for clients of the Center for Independent Living. We are
founding members of the Seniors and Law Together (SALT), an organization which
provides social services and also prevents victimization and crime against
seniors. With the local fire marshal's approval, our volunteers routinely
install smoke alarms (donated by the local firefighters union) in homes of
elderly residents. We also work with the emergency management and disaster team,
registering elderly for safe places in case of emergency (flood, hurricane,
tornado, etc.) and several of our volunteers will work in the shelter as long as
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 In addition to adult volunteers,
the Girl Scouts from Pine
Island and Cape Coral have made walker aprons, enabling individuals utilizing
four legged walkers to carry portable phones and other small items with them.
This project has been augmented by the Fort Myers Chapter of the American Sewing
Guild. To date, we have distributed over 250 walker aprons to the elderly
throughout the community. Youth from our coalition churches have helped build
wheelchair ramps, cleaned apartments, homes, and carports, performed yard and
lawn care, painted a home, written letters to elderly, delivered food baskets
and Christmas cheer (baking cookies, delivering small artificial trees, and
caroling). Among other youth projects this summer, a youth group from one of our
coalition churches performed a three day "work camp," washing mobile
homes, housecleaning, weeding, trimming bushes and also assisting a blind lady
with her move into a new home. In the evenings, they attended Bible School prior
to "camping" for the night in the youth room of the church.
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