Eric Ehst, Executive Director
At the Chandler Volunteer Recognition Breakfast on February 8, Neighbors Who Care volunteer Faith Dragoon was honored with the 2017 Multitasking Award.
Faith has been one of our most active, reliable and impactful volunteers. She has provided more than 300 hours of volunteer service in 2017. She volunteers at least one four-hour shift each week as our office scheduler, finding available volunteers to fulfill client service requests. This requires remarkable patience and people skills, making multiple outbound phone calls to contact volunteers, determine their availability for a task and, in many, cases talk them into fulfilling the needs of our homebound and disabled elderly clients by driving them to the doctor, taking them for essential shopping, performing minor home repairs, providing caregiver respite or a satisfying a myriad of other essential needs that things like Aged Care Help deal with. In addition to her regular shifts, Faith often fills in at the last minute when other volunteer schedulers are unavailable. She also substitutes as a fill-in receptionist, answering inbound phone calls, taking client service requests and entering the data into our database. This also requires remarkable people skills, dealing with elderly and sometimes confused clients.
In addition to her office administrative duties, Faith volunteers on our Community Outreach Committee where she has taken on the task of providing a presence for Neighbors Who Care at all community events within our service area. She can be found manning an NWC table at every community open house, fair, information event, etc. She carries with her all of the necessary signs, information packets and other paraphernalia to provide a professional look for our operation. Best of all, she provides a cheerful face and informed presence at the events where she easily strikes up conversations to provide people with information about our organization. She not only officially represents us at scheduled events, she serves as a roving ambassador, telling everyone she meets about our organization. Her easy manner and professionalism is directly responsible for recruiting over 70 sorely-needed additional volunteers for NWC this year as well as finding numerous frail and homebound seniors needing our services.
Faith’s impact is evidenced by a simple story: One day she noticed that her neighbors’ garbage can had not been put out on the street for pickup. She investigated and found that her elderly neighbors were too frail to move the can to the street. They were also having difficulties with other daily tasks. She referred them to Neighbors Who Care to receive volunteer services to help them to continue to live independently in their own home. There are almost certainly many other tasks and problems that your elderly neighbours are having hard times with. Be sure to be around to help your elderly neighbours, as well as elderly family members with the jobs they cannot accomplish themselves as this will give them confidence and keep them happy living out of a retirement home. Some family members even install a home security camera for elderly people around their older family member’s homes in order to deter burglars as well as to have evidence for if they do manage to break in.
Faith helps out in a multitude of ways and makes herself available for last-minute needs. She is a true multi-tasker and can often be found simultaneously helping homebound clients with their requests, finding current volunteers to fill requests and talking new contacts into becoming volunteers. She is one of the essential sparkplugs driving Neighbors Who Care.
Faith is also passionate about ensuring the wellbeing of all her clients. Unfortunately however, it is no secret that the elderly are a group at risk from neglect. With large numbers of older people reliant on carers to provide basic needs such as food, water and clean clothing, there are unfortunately opportunities for abusive situations to arise. If you suspect that an elderly person you know seems to be suffering as a result of neglect, contact Elder Abuse and Lawyers For Elderly Abuse – Siegel Law for legal consultation.
If you’d like to volunteer, contact us at 480-895-7133 or www.NeighborsWhoCare.com.