Friendship Retirement Community residents are collaborating with the Rescue Mission to prepare meals for shelter guests, sort donated items and more.
Friendship Retirement Community and the Rescue Mission of Roanoke are partnering by engaging seniors in a variety of volunteer activities. These include preparing meals, decorating paper bags for bagged lunches and sorting donations that benefit the men, women and children served by the Rescue Mission. Friendship has invited its residents to take part in this initiative to make a difference in the greater community.
Studies have shown that senior adults who volunteer in their community have better emotional health, higher physical activity and greater physical health. In short, volunteering is a way of improving both health and society.
Eleven residents participated in the first on-site volunteer experience, held on June 27. It was a great success, with residents feeling energized by the difference they were able to make for those experiencing homelessness.
“Half of us prepared food in the kitchen, and half of us worked across the street in the building where they take donations, and we sorted shoes and hung up clothes,” explains resident Judy Bower. “It just made me very proud to live at Friendship.”
Volunteer sessions will take place every fourth Tuesday from 1:30-3:30 p.m.
