Be a Santa to a Senior ensures vulnerable older folks not left out
Program continues to grow year by year, with donations of home essentials
You can barely open a newspaper this time of year without seeing a story about local groups, agencies, clubs and organizations working hard to make sure that no kids in Niagara go without toys at Christmas.
While that’s an admirable and much-needed thing, many people forget that children from families struggling to make ends meet aren’t the only ones who may be left with nothing under the tree on Christmas morning.
Lonely, isolated seniors too often also go without on the big day.
But shoppers at a number of Niagara stores and showgoers at the Shaw Festival Theatre are doing their part to make sure many of those seniors get gifts from total strangers.
For the fourth consecutive year, the Niagara Falls-based location of Home Instead Senior Care — an agency that helps seniors remain at home longer through help with such tasks as meal preparation, light housekeeping, medication reminders, companionship and transportation — is spearheading the Be a Santa to a Senior program.
The holiday gift drive sees Christmas trees placed in participating partners’ locations, with paper Christmas ‘ornaments’ hung listing gift ideas for elderly men and women.
The gifts aren’t fancy flat screen televisions, trendy clothes, smartphones or other luxuries.
“They’re the necessities,” said Denielle Cuoco, co-owner and managing director of the local Home Instead location. “It’s simple, straightforward things; everyday things we take for granted.”
Among the gift ideas are such things as toiletries, underwear, dish and bath towels, coats, cleaning products, mops and buckets, and pyjamas.
The seniors in need of donations — and the items they’re most in need of — are identified by social workers with Niagara Region's seniors community outreach program, who visit vulnerable seniors in their homes. Those social workers submit a list to the program and deliver the gifts to their clients, who remain anonymous.
The seniors are people who often live on very tight budgets, for whom everyday necessities may be too expensive.
“We’re targeting people who are in need,” said Cuoco.
The local Be a Santa to a Senior program, one of many run by Home Instead franchises, started out with about 75 gifts in the first year. That’s grown each year — last there were about 350 gifts, and Cuoco is targeting 500 gifts this year.
Staff with Cuoco’s agency and the region get together closer to Christmas to wrap the gifts before they’re delivered to partners including Stamford Home Hardware in Niagara Falls, the Boggio Pharmacy in Port Colborne, Pleasantview Funeral Home and Cemetery in Fonthill — and the new partner, the Shaw Festival. Nikki Campagiorni, assistant manager at the hardware store on Portage Road, said that people eagerly await the launch of the program each year; her business phone was already ringing back in October.
“People are calling and asking when the Christmas ornaments will be up,” she said.
Campagiorni that said it’s nice to see people thinking about lonely seniors this time of year.
“At Christmastime people are always thinking about toys for kids, but seniors can get overlooked,” she said. “Everyone’s surrounded by friends and family, but these people aren’t necessarily, so it’s nice to think about them as well.”
Cuoco said that the tree at Stamford Home Hardware just went up five days earlier, but the ornaments were all picked clean by people eager to help, so more were being put up.
“It’s a unique program that people, particularly other seniors, can relate with,” she said. “The community response is overwhelming.”
Cuoco said that while she and gift donors won’t meet the recipients, it’s heartwarming to know they’ll get a boost from the kindness of strangers.