Service, with a smile
With volunteer work, Jean Theroux and Aline Robidoux find it’s never too late to give back
WOONSOCKET – Life wasn’t easy for city resident Jean Theroux after her husband Richard died, as she was struggling to find a way out of her despair and despondency.
While the struggle was often taxing, and discussing her husband and that pe- riod of her life is still a challenge, Theroux has found an outlet in the Woonsocket Senior Center and the various volunteering programs available at the Social Street center.
Theroux, 76, now is in her first year with Meals on Wheels and her ninth as a volunteer with the center’s senior wellness program.
“I first started when my husband passed away,” she recalled. “I needed to get out. The exercise program was a plus for me, a good out, I got to talk with people. They have so much going on here.”
“You see the other side of people who live and their needs, that’s been helpful for me to share. A lot of people are lonesome,” Theroux said on Thursday.
“In that sense it’s rewarding. I’m giving back.”
Theroux said her experience with the loneliness that accompanies losing a loved one has given her a keen insight into what some at the center may be dealing with.
“It got me out. I didn’t
want to go anywhere or do anything … It’s given me a different outlook on life, to go out and be with people,” she said. “It got me out of my loneliness to be with people. It was something good and it helped me a lot to open up.”
“It’s difficult for people who are alone, to go out and do something like this,” Theroux added. “But it’s very rewarding.”
The struggle of losing a spouse and the depression that follows is something that fellow Woonsocket resident Aline Robidoux can relate to. She’d been visiting to the center with her husband before his death, but after he died, coming back wasn’t initially as easy.
But Robidoux, 79, found peace and a sense of pride in her work as a meal volunteer. She recalled one particular story that filled her with a sense of accomplishment – a homeless man entered the center one day, saying he’d been thrown out of his Woonsocket home and had no money. Robidoux took
it upon herself to take him to the Woonsocket Housing Authority and the local food pantry to help the man.
A few months later, she said, she was shopping at an area supermarket when she saw the man buying food for his new apartment.
“It makes you feel good, helping other people...” Robidoux said. “I volunteer a lot, from volunteering at the meal sites at the senior center to helping set up for Valentine’s Day parties, dances.”
Linda Thibault, director of the senior wellness program at the Woonsocket Senior Center, said the program is “all about health promotion and chronic disease prevention.” She says the program, which has been in existence since 2009 – and where Theroux volunteers – takes a three-pronged approach to elderly health.
The first, she says, is health education. That’s followed by exercise – with daily classes at the center – and then providing the seniors with the needed information to “take
charge of their life,” from blood pressure monitoring to nurse consultations.
“We make sure the seniors have the information they need to be advocates for their own health,” Thibault said. “We challenge them. We’re getting older but we’re not getting stupid.”
While the volunteer efforts of people like Theroux and Robidoux are certainly worth lauding, the need still exists for more to donate their time to the Blackstone Valley Community Action Program’s Northern Rhode Island meal sites and Meals on Wheels program.
According to statistics from BVCAP, there are 294 active volunteers at 31 volunteer stations spread across Woonsocket, Pawtucket, Burrillville, Central Falls, Cumberland, Glocester, Lincoln, and North Smithfield.
Thirty-four volunteers distributed food at sites in Woonsocket and Pawtucket, providing referrals, nutritional education, and resources such as SNAP, while 33 vol-
unteers worked as Meals on Wheels drivers in northern Rhode Island. Approximately 200 seniors receive meals daily and those who participate report a sense of social connection and less isolation, BVCAP officials said.
Ten meal sites are located in Woonsocket, Burrillville, Cumberland, Glocester, and Lincoln and the goal is to open two more in the future.
“We need volunteers to get food on the table,” Laura-Jean Ferranti, project director with BVCAP’s Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, said. When asked how many volunteers are needed, she said: “As many as we can get. Meals on Wheels is the same … We’re always looking for drivers.”
To inquire about volunteering with BVCAP’s meal sites or Meals on Wheels, contact Ferranti at 401-7234520, ext. 275 or email her at ljferranti@bvcap.org.