Become a Senior Angel
Friendship is the ultimate kindness.
Help create a more age-integrated society and instill positive attitudes toward aging by providing your child with positive contacts with seniors.
In this unique project, your family will let seniors know they are remembered and loved through weekly correspondence.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, families are looking for ways to share kindness from afar. This resource page offers a growing list of ways your family can share kindness, volunteer, donate, and learn together, even as you stay home together to slow the spread of the virus.
Possible recipients
Seniors who may be home-bound, confined to nursing homes, or in convalescent hospitals and who will look forward to your weekly greetings.
If you have a relative or neighbor you'd like to reach out to, great.
If not, reach out to a nearby nursing home or assisted living facility and let them know you'd like to share letters and occasional visits with a resident who may be lonely.
Or, you can visit the Senior Angel website.
What you’ll need
Stationery, greeting cards, pens, drawing or art supplies
Occasional small, inexpensive, gifts ($2-$5), such as a box of tea or bar of scented soap
Postage
Instructions
Reach out to a senior you know or a nearby senior care facility.
Alternatively, go to the Senior Angel website (a program of Chemo Angels) to understand the responsibilities of the program. If you are comfortable with the requirements, sign up to become a Senior Angel and you’ll be matched with a new senior friend.
Once-a-week send your older friend chatty letters, friendly cards, uplifting notes, children’s drawings and perhaps an occasional small gift.
If you are participating in the Senior Angel program, be aware that you’ll be making a long-term commitment to someone who may come to rely on you, so it’s vitally important that you are able to send your older friend at least one piece of correspondence every week. Of course, commitment and reliability are important facets of any friendship.
Reflections
What do you think an older person can teach us? What can we learn from them? (Explain that older adults can offer all of us their lifelong wisdom, experience and stories.)
How would you feel if you couldn’t walk quickly or couldn’t get out to visit your friends?
If you were confined to your home or a particular place and couldn’t get leave often, what would you miss the most?
Resources
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox
This simple, heart-warming story sets the stage for creative, thoughtful acts of kindness inspired by Mem Fox’s delightful characters.
Members, visit our Exclusive Downloads Collection to print conversation cards for Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox.
Sitti’s Secrets by Naomi Shihab Nye
A young girl visits her grandmother in a Palestinian village, and their love transcends differences in language and culture. Ages 4-8.Discover more titles about older adults and aging by browsing our extensive collections of picture books and chapter books that celebrate seniors and aging.
Picture Books
Chapter Books
Take it further
Find an older neighbor whom you can visit and spend time with, invite to dinner, or bring groceries or necessities to.
Contact your local nursing home or care facility and arrange to “adopt” a grandparent.
Still looking?
Practice daily kindness with these simple project ideas.
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The recommendations we offer are based solely on our mission to empower parents to raise children who care and contribute.