Ken Dorland, co-founder of Aging in Place-The Woodlands
In 2015, Ken Dorland helped co-found Aging in Place - The Woodlands, a nonprofit organization that assists the elderly by providing free transportation, minor home maintenance/repairs, tech support and other services.
Dorland and his wife, Mary, were searching for a place to retire, but as they had already lived in The Woodlands for several years, they decided there was no reason to move. The only thing lacking in the area was public transportation. Dorland then made it his mission to solve the problem and ended up becoming part of something bigger. Aging in Place -The Woodlands is a memberbased volunteer organization that begins recruiting people in their mid-50s who are starting to think about retirement. They are invited to become members and volunteer during their retirement years
because, as Dorland put it, they will have more time on their hands than they realize and can’t spend every day golfing. Those volunteers are then able to reap the rewards of their time and effort as they get older and require the same services that once provided to others.
Question: Why did you help found Aging in Place The Woodlands?
Dorland: I have lived here for 25 years. (My wife and I) decided that we would retire in The Woodlands. It had everything we wanted except one thing. There’s no public transportation, and as you grow older that becomes more important.
It took a while discussing it with neighbors and friends. We talked about what was possible, what could you do. We came up with this idea of ride-share, and we were talking about it for Panther Creek, just a local neighborhood thing. And then one day I read an article in the Chronicle that Bruce Cunningham over in Grogan’s Mill — he was president of the Grogan’s Mill Association — was starting a concept for aging in place for Grogan’s Mill. It would be a service organization that would provide various services for the members to help people live in their own homes and not have to move to an assisted living (facility) or something like that. When I saw that, I gave him a call and said, “I have an interest in something like that in Panther Creek, maybe we could get together.” He had two or three other people that also called as a result of that article. So we set up a founder’s day. We met over at the local library and we continued to meet there for several months and gradually put this together.
Question: How does the ride share program work? Dorland: I developed and continue to develop the ride-share program. It’s completely voluntary. It’s all based on volunteers and basically it’s membership. You join Aging in Place and you’re entitled to be a rider. To become a rider you fill out an application and it’s accepted by the application committee if we have enough drivers.
Last year, in January, we presented the results of a study. We did a test in November of 2016, testing the concept of ride-share and it worked pretty well. So we brought it to the board of Aging in Place and got it accepted as the transportation service of Aging in Place. We started in February of 2017 and during the rest of that year we did 176 rides with all volunteer drivers, and it’s going quite well right now. We’re actively looking for new volunteers. We want to encourage people to get into this.
The whole idea of rideshare is it’s a community building exercise. Once you get into a community, you realize there are people who don’t drive for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s age, sometimes it’s disability and sometimes it’s just a physical problem. One of our riders has Parkinson’s Disease. He’s quite capable of driving if he didn’t have Parkinson’s.
But there is a problem. People don’t like to ask for favors. Imagine if you couldn’t drive. You have good friends and probably anyone of those would be willing to take you to the doctor. You just can’t bring yourself to ask them. So people put off going to the doctor or put off going to the grocery store to get what they need. Rideshare came into being because we wanted to take people where they need to go. It’s not based on absolute need. Some government programs will take you to the doctor but that’s it. They won’t take you to Walmart. They won’t take you to a friend’s bridge party. We want people
to feel like just because they can’t drive anymore doesn’t mean they’re any less important to the community. Ride-share says we’ll take you where you want to go. We’re not going to ask you why.
Question: What inspired you to help create the ride-share program?
Dorland: It’s a little bit more than around the corner from here to a super market and it’s a long way from here to a doctor. We just got to thinking we need to solve the transportation problem. The Woodlands isn’t really laid out for public transportation. In a city like St. Louis or Atlanta, you can walk down to the corner and catch a bus. But in The Woodlands, the streets wind and curve around and there’s no real place where you can put a bus stop that would be handy to people within walking distance, particularly as you get old and can’t walk that far. So we just got to thinking about it.
Ultimately, ride-share will come down to a neighborhood. Right now the whole Woodlands is part of the same ride-share, but we have a concept that once we get large enough to where we have enough people in various areas we’ll shave off, say Panther Creek, and they’ll have their own riders and drivers and they’ll be dispatched from the call center. So that The Woodlands drivers get to know The Woodlands riders and it becomes a community type thing. And this will repeat itself in all the villages as it gets more mature.
Some years out I can imagine that there might be a little bus stop like an air conditioned glass bus stop near a shopping center or somewhere where you can walk into the door and push a button like you would in an elevator. Except, instead of floors one through 12 it would be St. Luke’s, the mall. And there would be a video. You could see who’s waiting so it wouldn’t be something
that would get abused. That’s the long-term solution, but we’re still years from that. Right now we’re in the mode of attracting volunteers. Question: What are some of the challenges the ride-share program has faced?
Dorland: A lot are scared to death they’re going to get sued by somebody so we have an extra liability policy. And that was one of the major things we had to have when we first got incorporated as Aging in Place. We had to have a liability policy that would cover the volunteers because you can go in with your best efforts and your heart in the right place to help somebody, but if somebody gets hurt in the process and they feel like (we’re responsible) and their neighbor’s a lawyer who is like I can get you some money from the insurance company. Well, people are scared about getting sued so one of the first things we had to do—and we had to do it before we could actually do the test on the ride-share—was we had to get an insurance policy.
All of our drivers are vetted. They have to have a criminal background check and a Department of Motor Vehicle check. We’ve had some people that could get past the criminal thing but are a little reluctant to do the driver. I don’t know, maybe they got a ticket for speeding last week or maybe they had a DUI in their history somewhere, so they don’t want to do it. So they shy away from the driver part.
Question: What do you most enjoy about being part of Aging in Place?
Dorland: I feel like it’s the kind of thing everybody does if they volunteer. I just felt like I’ve always been willing to do things (for others) all my life. I was a scout master for a bunch of years. I taught evening classes for a college at one time for professional development for people that were in my profession—that sort of thing. I just felt like if it needs doing somebody’s got to do it.