Our Community Cares Continues To Expand Services Supporting Local Seniors

By Patrick Sherry

Helping senior citizens age in place and providing meaningful companionship is the foundation of the mission of Our Community Cares. Through its volunteers, this local nonprofit is working to maintain the independence of local seniors, so they can continue to live in their chosen community.

Our Community Cares is one of just a handful of South Florida organizations that offer free non-medical support services to seniors. Its goal is to keep seniors connected through providing basic assistance to improve their quality of life. Throughout Wellington and Royal Palm Beach, volunteers from Our Community Cares are helping support the growing senior populations in both villages.

Kathy Foster, the first mayor of Wellington, founded the organization in 2010. She explained how she began learning that seniors around the country did not want to give up living in their homes, even though they could no longer get around easily. She spent months researching how many seniors were “aging in place,” then started building the organization with a group of friends and supporters to help them.

“They spend a lifetime working, contributing to a community, taking care of their families,” Foster said. “In their later years, they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor, in their home, with the community that they have enjoyed and been part of.”

For more than a decade, the organization was known as Wellington Cares. Originally, volunteers primarily assisted seniors in Wellington, but those at the organization quickly recognized a need for such services in other nearby communities.

In 2020, the nonprofit’s board looked into expanding its assistance programs to the Village of Royal Palm Beach. Four years later, they rebranded the organization to Our Community Cares to better represent its ambition to support more seniors across Palm Beach County.

“We needed to make sure that we could handle another whole community of seniors who needed assistance,” Foster said. “After careful research and outreach into the Royal Palm Beach community, looking for donors who might assist us in the additional costs, we stepped up to the plate about a year and a half ago and have been very successful.”

Dozens of volunteers help over a hundred senior participants 65 and older with basic living tasks through free transportation, minor home repairs, respite championship and social connections through regular interaction. Many of the participants involved in the program have lost the ability to do many of these activities themselves, but the organization enables them to remain independent and healthy while creating social connections.

Director of Operations Diane Gutman started as a volunteer for the organization and said working with seniors helped her family have a deeper connection to the community.

“I am very proud that this organization started out helping a handful of people in the Wellington community, and now we are helping so many throughout Wellington and Royal Palm Beach,” Gutman said.

Those interested in volunteering go through a vetting and training process where they get to select their preferences for what type of help they would like to provide. Many of them are younger seniors or retirees looking to give back to the community. The organization emphasizes that volunteer schedules are flexible, so people can contribute as much as they are able to.

Importantly, seniors can develop relationships and create friendships that overall improve their quality of life.

“Kindness is the foundation of a happy life,” Foster said. “All these people step forward to help strangers, and as a result, have built friendships and a stronger community for all of us to benefit from.”

Volunteers like Shannon Berthiaume, who is a program manager and provides services to participants in both Wellington and Royal Palm Beach, said that these small acts of kindness mean a lot to seniors in the programs.

“For me, it’s just a way to give back,” Berthiaume explained. “I feel accomplished… I do it because it’s good.”

Since its creation, Our Community Cares has provided over a million dollars in free support.

With the senior population growing, the organization is always looking for volunteers to give help to participants in need.

“We grow right alongside our communities,” Foster said. “The more people who’ve come to move into the area, the more need there is for our services, and the more volunteers that are needed.”

Royal Palm Beach, in particular, needs more volunteers. With most current volunteers providing services in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach can always use more people to meet the growing need.

Gutman reiterated that the organization appreciates any help it can get, even if it is small. Any assistance people can give to seniors goes a long way to improving their lives.

“Age does not discriminate,” Gutman said. “We’re all going to grow older, and we’re all going to need help at one time or another.”

For more information about Our Community Cares services, volunteering or becoming a participant, call (561) 568-8818 or visit www.ourcommunitycaresfl.org.