Wait. Capitol Hill Village does all that??

Everyday CHV volunteers and staff provide life-saving acts of kinds that keep seniors connected, informed, safe and happy.

A few months ago one of CHV’s very first members passed away. “Mrs. T” had lived on Capitol Hill her entire life, raised her children here, and lived a good life. In her aging years, she kept her wit and brains, but her ability to get around was greatly diminished, and she was blind.

After Mrs. T died, her daughter wrote a beautiful note to us. What I love about this note was that it demonstrated how CHV’s work is a compilation of numerous acts of kindness. Next, the daughter went on to list all of the things that we did for Mrs. T.

The following programs were provided by or on behalf of Capitol Hill Village:

• Many rides to doctor appointments, hair salon, and more places
• Mulching the yard, cutting the grass, and shoveling the walk
• Work with DC Office on Aging to a) have meals delivered; b) get a chair lift and grab bars installed
• Connecting her to a range of low-cost transportation options aside from volunteer drivers
• Working to get a part time home health aid that went on walks with her, did her laundry, worked in the kitchen alongside her making meals and more.
• Facilitating Mrs. T’s enrollment in the Medstar House Calls Programs which provided a cadre of geriatric providers that gave excellent services.

Mrs. T’s daughter also named the staff member who worked most closely with Mrs. T, and our Village Connection volunteer who accompanied Mrs. T. to doctors’ appointments and visited her regularly.

   Please.       Look at that list again.

See how many of those activities are done by friends and neighbors volunteering. Second, look at the variety of activities that were vital to Mrs. T living at home. On a day-to-day basis, we don’t take inventory of how much we do for community members, so seeing a list like this makes us understand that we are essential to connecting people to services, providing rides to the hair salon, and even coordinating volunteers washing windows.

Letters like this remind us how acts of kindness really add up.
In sum, that is what CHV does best: we coordinate a better life in a thousand small ways for community members.

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