South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Real benefits to virtual volunteering
Those forced into new ways to serve others find joy
Paula Brynen has been finding a sense of purpose in volunteer work for years — and even more so after her job as a fundraiser for public television in California was eliminated two years ago.
Having survived leukemia in 2011, she volunteers with the local chapter of the nonprofit Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, work that has been especially important to her.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Brynen devoted 15 hours a month to the organization and other causes, including arts groups.
In March, the health risks of in-person contact brought all of her in-person volunteering to an abrupt halt, forcing her in new directions. Her volunteer work has become all virtual, but she finds herself devoting even more hours each month to her causes now.
Brynen, a 65-year- old Los Angeles resident, finds thework gratifying, evenessential, she said. “It’s so important to be a good citizen and to help others.”
Volunteers are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations, but the pandemic has created major barriers to participation, especially for older people, who face a higher risk of serious illness or death if they contract the coronavirus. As a result, nonprofit organizations are grappling with the challenge of finding new, safe ways to engage with older volunteers.
So far, those efforts have seen mixed results, said Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United, a nonprofit focused on intergenerational collaboration. “We’re hearing about some really wonderful successes of people who are pivoting and are resilient and findingways to stay connected — and we’re also hearing about the problems
of social isolation that older adults are experiencing.”
Like somuch of life in the pandemic, volunteer work has largely moved online, and technology can be a barrier for some older adults. They can be less likely to use the latest technology, according to the
Pew Research Center; for example, last year 59% of Americans age 65 and older had broadband internet connections, roughly 20 percentage points fewer than those in younger age groups.
Connectivity is a central challenge, according to
Thomas Kamber, a founder and executive director of Older Adults Technology Services, a New York-based nonprofit that operates Senior Planet, which helps older adults learn to use technology.
“People often think they have more connectivity than they actually do, or they’re not aware of the kind of connectivity setup that they need in order to participate inanactivity,” he said.
Fluency with software applications also can be a stumbling block, Kamber added, especially with video conferencing software like Zoom.
None of that has stopped Brynen.
Before the pandemic, she volunteered for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night, an annual fundraising walk at which participants carry glowing lanterns.
Brynen would help out with setup and at the event; nowadays, she focuses on phone calls. “They usually give volunteers a small list of calls to make,” she said, “but because I worked in fundraising and have no problem making phone calls, they gave me 50 names this year.”
Opportunities with arts groups have disappeared for now, but she has several new projects, including working as a mentor with Table Wisdom, a St. Louisbased nonprofit that matches older adults with students and young professionals in the United States and abroad who need career advice and help with English-language skills.
And that is a role she cherishes. She connects each week via Zoom with a young environmental engineer in Colombia who is hoping to advance her career by improving her English.
“We talk about politics and movie recommendations — I’ve learned a lot about Colombia and the Amazon, and she’s learned about things like Los Angeles architecture.” Most recently, Brynen and her husband, Paul, a retired human resources manager, have been helping her mentee practice for a job interview.
Brynen used computers regularly in her public television job, so the transition “from life to Zoom” hasn’t been difficult, she said. She uses an iPad, which allows her to move around her house during calls. “Zoom has been fairly intuitive, but there definitelywas a learning curve,” she says.
Not all of the new volunteer activity is virtual. In northern Minnesota, acommunity garden program has seen a new infusion of older volunteers, said Lynn Haglin, vice president at the Northland Foundation, a Duluth-basedgroupthat organizes and funds thework.
This year, the foundation
sponsored11Age toAge gardens in the region, designed to bring together young people and older volunteers. This year was even more popular than previous ones, with about 200 people taking part, she said.
“People have wanted to get outside, and they wanted to have an opportunity to get their hands in the dirt and grow their own vegetables or flowers,” she said. “People feel a little safer outdoors, and the gardens are often large enough or in separated plots so people can be there at the same time and keep a safe distance.”
The harvested produce has benefited not only the volunteer gardeners, as the food is shared with assisted living and care facilities and food banks.
Feeling less isolated and lonely has been a crucial benefit for people who have found a way to volunteer during the pandemic.
“I was really kind of frightened that I’d have my world taken away fromme,” said Barbara Lewers, a
79-year- old New Yorker who spent two afternoons every week volunteering at Senior Planet’s center in Manhattan before the pandemic.
When Senior Planet shifted its work completely online, Lewers shifted, too. A retired advertising creative director, she has volunteered in a program that makes check-in calls to older New Yorkers. She has also helped with a program that has deployed 10,000 tablet computers to older low-income residents in city housing, helping to train people how to use them.