Elderly

Various centers of Chios Island, such as Elderly Nursing Homes and institutions supporting people in poverty, people with fewer opportunities and youngsters from a marginalized community or at risk of facing discrimination don’t have the necessary staff and desperately need a helping hand from the ESC Volunteers.
Especially nowadays, under the threat of Covid-19, when the way we live, interact with others, work and learn have changed, the above-mentioned institutions are in more need than they ever were, since they need to adapt to a new reality and they need to teach their staff and residents how to adapt to this reality as well.
Due to the fact that the public authorities don’t have the capacity to provide this assistance, our ESC Volunteers offer an important helping hand to those in need in the aforementioned institutions of our Island that heavily rely on volunteer support, such as Elderly Nursing Homes and institutions supporting people in poverty and with fewer opportunities.
The young volunteers that will participate in this activity will integrate with the local community by helping an institution which depends mostly on voluntary work and donations. By having an assistant role in the demanding and understaffed kitchen of the elderly care facility, they will offer precious help to the kitchen staff while helping in the serving the meals procedure at the dinning area, residents and volunteers will have the chance to create a bond. This interaction, is the point where the volunteers will be able to see day by day the results of the positive impact that might their presence have. This activity takes place in a public institution that barely operates with public funds whose regular operation and services depend in a big degree in volunteer work and donations, the elderly care facility. This is a place where its director is a young person with a kind heart and the will to give the most he can in this public service. In this facility the residents are old people with very bad financial status and a lot of them have dementia or / and other physical maladies that might keep them bedridden. These residents check-in either voluntarily or by their families because their condition is becoming difficult to handle or because they become a burden. Unfortunately, even if visitors are allowed most of the residents don’t have any. Usually, once an old person is checking in the facility, his/her family gradually plays the part of the staff also for the rest of the residents.
In this depressing and difficult situation, volunteers bring some light in the grey lives of the residents and the staff by helping in the kitchen and food distribution on the dinning area and if needed at the rooms of the most difficult cases. The staff gets an extra help that is always needed, while the spark in the eyes of the residents when they interact with the young volunteers makes it obvious that they somehow replace the gap they have from the absence of their family and grandchildren.