FARMINGTON – This past holiday season, a group of students from Mt. Blue High School decided to try to help spread some holiday cheer to the residents of local nursing homes by sending greeting cards to their elderly community members. Due to Covid safety measures, outside visitors to the residents have been severely limited; and traditional events such as trick-or-treating in the nursing homes, Christmas caroling, and other live performances have been canceled and absent from the care facilities since last March.
Spearheaded by Mt. Blue Junior, Sadie McDonough, the idea to write cards to residents is a way to reach out and connect during a time when many people, especially nursing and assisted living home residents, feel isolated. McDonough had often visited her own great-grandmother, Marvel, a few years ago when she was a resident at Pinewood Terrace, and later on, at Orchard Park. She saw how happy people were to get visitors and thought that with the many visiting restrictions currently caused by the pandemic, there was a need to help people feel connected to the community. Connection through the mail seemed to be a perfect solution. Together with the efforts of six other students, McDonough sent over 60 holiday cards to residents in mid-December.
Sue Bell, the administrator at Pinewood Terrace, responded to the students’ goodwill, saying that the residents really appreciated the gesture and that many were cheered up by this unexpected connection to the outside world.
McDonough and her classmates are planning to repeat the same “Operation Card Connection” for Valentine’s Day, and possibly on a bigger scale, by involving the greater community and not just the few students who started the project. With the sponsorship of local business Minikins, McDonough has arranged to have card kits available for pick-up at the Minikins store at 218 Broadway for anyone interested in participating. Each kit will have craft materials sufficient for making at least 10 cards. Once completed, the cards can be returned to Minikins where they will be picked up by the high school students to distribute to the local nursing homes. It is a great opportunity for children and adults to be creative and to help make a difference in the lives of isolated residents.
McDonough hopes to continue to reach out and connect to even more of our local sequestered citizens with these hand-made cards, a gesture of kindness that may help to alleviate some of the loneliness that is an all-too-prevalent consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Card kits are available now at Minikins for pick up. They are packed with construction paper, stickers, doilies, etc. for making Valentine’s Day cards. There is no cost to participants. McDonough is asking that they be returned to Minikins by February 5th so they can be delivered to local care facilities in time for Valentine’s Day.
For more information, please email Sadie McDonough at 22smcdonough@mtbluersd.org or the owner of Minikins, Susun Terese, at susun@minikins.org. (Minikins is open from 10:30 to 5, Tuesday through Saturday.)
