UW students stepped up to bring companionship and honest work to Laramie’s senior living centers during last weekend’s Service Saturday.
The service opportunity was organized by SLCE (Service, Learning and Community Engagement), which also puts together The Big Event and other community service endeavors. For the most recent Service Saturday, dozens of student volunteers visited the Ivinson Home for Ladies and the Laramie Care Center.
Karyssa Gorge, an Environmental Engineering major who frequently volunteers her time in events such as SLCE’s service projects, said it’s all about “giving back” and creating a better community.
“As students and just growing up, we’ve always taken, our parents always provided,” Gorge said. “It’s just about us growing and becoming a better person and just giving back of what we’ve sort of taken, and just helping whenever we can. I know when I was growing up I wasn’t giving back, I wasn’t volunteering, my parents took care of me, people helped me out—it’s just about being there for everybody.”
Benefits of the visits to the senior centers weren’t limited to seniors themselves.
“It’s really nice seeing a community come together, meeting people and hearing their stories,” Gorge said. “They’re very open, they’re very nice to talk to, they just want to have a conversation.”
At the Care Center, students joined residents for simple visiting time and participated in activities such as BINGO—after being jokingly warned that residents get “pretty serious” about their BINGO. Even residents who don’t often get out of their rooms, or don’t want to, had the opportunity to spend time with visiting students.
“It is very valuable for them, they really do enjoy that interaction with the younger generation,” Activities Assistant Eva Mendoza said. “They have a lot stories they tell about their lives and they like to hear what the students are doing, about their goals and what they’re trying to achieve.”
At the Ivinson Home for Ladies, students got their hands dirty out on the Home’s expansive grounds. Some students focused on getting Christmas lights ready while others took care of jobs that were beyond the maintenance crew’s scope, such as buildups of leaves on the far reaches of the property that can’t be addressed with machinery—students ended up gathering at least 50 bags. Director Debi Ockers said the offer of volunteer work from SLCE “was just a godsend.”
“We have 40 cottonwoods, so you can imagine how many leaves we have,” Ockers said. “I thought, oh my gosh, I am so glad to talk to somebody who wants to do a service project—especially young, strong men, you bet.”
The Home was built in 1930 by Laramie entrepreneur and philanthropist Edward Ivinson in memory of his wife, Jane.
“It was to be a large mansion, basically, to house single women over the age of 65 to make them comfortable and feel safe in a home-like atmosphere,” Ockers said. “That’s our mission and we’ll continue to fulfill that.”
