Covenant Health caregivers volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Lubbock, Texas to build homes for families and individuals within their community.
[3 minute read]
Caregiver volunteers take love to our communities
Within Providence, acts of kindness don't only happen at random. Many are intentional, coordinated, and well organized.
Through the new Action Hub, launched last year during the challenges and persistence of COVID-19, our caregivers are finding a wide variety of ways to volunteer, advocate, spread kindness and serve our communities beyond the walls of our hospitals and clinics.
Messages of Hope reach beyond COVID-19 isolation
Glenda Fossum-Smith has always enjoyed making cards, so when she heard about Messages of Hope, she was all in. Through the Providence initiative, caregivers share cards and letters with residents in community living, including Providence’s Home and Community Care facilities.
“It’s part of our Providence culture to reach out to our communities,” says Fossum-Smith, a Mission leader in Portland, Ore. “During the pandemic, we haven’t been able to do that as much as we’d like, so being able to send encouragement in a way that’s safe felt fabulous.” She and the local Providence Women’s Resource Group used the Action Hub to spread the word, and she estimates that Providence ElderPlace participants alone received more than 3,000 cards.
With love from kids in Spain
In Alaska, Mission leader Nathan Rogers participated in a Facebook live broadcast to spread the Messages of Hope idea even further. Not long after, he says, “I received a package full of amazing cards for our residents, made by school kids in Spain!” In an enclosed note, their English teacher explained that it was a perfect opportunity to help the kids practice their English and also spread some holiday cheer across the world.
Love the Earth: practicing environmental stewardship
Taisha (Tai) Doo, a geriatric medicine fellow at Swedish in Seattle, Wash., found the first Love the Earth event on the Action Hub last October and signed up. She and 10 other caregivers partnered with Forterra, an environmental nonprofit, to remove invasive ivy from trees in a Seattle-area park. “This was really meaningful,” she says. “It was like volunteering to do something good, learning more about our Mission with caregivers I’d never met before, and experiencing a retreat – all at the same time.”
A similar event was held in November in Portland, Ore., with Friends of Trees, and new Love the Earth events are coming up in Napa, Calif., and other regions around Earth Day.
Habitat for Humanity: creating stability in the Lubbock community
In Lubbock, Texas, Covenant Health has nurtured a partnership with Habitat for Humanity for many years. Recently, caregivers started posting Habitat events on the Action Hub as a volunteerism recruitment tool, with great success. At a Blitz Build event last September, “Covenant employees came out in full force” to help complete exterior work on three homes in just 13 days, said Habitat executive director Christy Reeves. “We literally could not have had the success we did without them.”
Hear Me Now: Acts of kindness continue during pandemic
There is always a need
“I love that we have opportunities to partner with amazing organizations and build community,” says Melissa Tiberio, manager of domestic engagement for the Global and Domestic Engagement team. “Engaging in community service allows us to ease some of the impact the pandemic has had on our communities, while also promoting team bonding and caregiver renewal. It’s wonderful to see our caregivers smiling and connecting through in-person and virtual service. It’s even better to know their efforts are making a real difference in the community.”
For those looking to get in on the action, new opportunities are posted regularly. Caregivers within the Providence family of organizations can visit the Action Hub.
A Health for a Better World story, about serving with our local partners to build community resilience.
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