CARIE seeks volunteers to send holiday greeting cards to isolated nursing home residents

Last year, our friends at the Center for Advocacy for the Rights & Interests of the Elderly (CARIE) rolled out a holiday card writing campaign called “Love Letters to Residents.” Their goal was to send a letter to every nursing home resident in CARIE’s service area.

Through the power of social media, word quickly spread through the local aging network and letters were sent to more than 2,000 nursing home residents!

This year they want to do it again, with a goal to reach even more residents.

For this year’s campaign, CARIE has added Montgomery County nursing home residents to their mailing list, which means there’s a need for cards and letters for up to 4,000 nursing home residents this time around.

They need your help!

If you want to write holiday cards to nursing home residents, send your name and email address and the number of cards/letters (multiples of 5) you can commit to sending to loveletterstoresidents@gmail.com. The deadline is December 19.

You will receive an email back with instructions for participating. The email will include the address of your assigned facility to mail the letters. For privacy reasons, CARIE is not able to provide a list of nursing home resident names, so you will be sending “Dear Friend” letters. A sample letter will be included in the instructions. You are welcome to invite the resident to write you back!

In your email, please indicate whether you are able to write in Spanish.

You will be responsible for purchasing your own cards and mailing them. You are welcome to send letters, cards or even art! This is also a wonderful activity to do with a group.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the loveletterstoresidents@gmail.com email address, and you will receive a response as soon as possible.