{"id":9255,"date":"2014-12-10T13:33:58","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T18:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9255"},"modified":"2014-12-10T13:33:58","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T18:33:58","slug":"seniors-need-so-little-but-that-little-goes-a-long-way-wish-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/seniors-need-so-little-but-that-little-goes-a-long-way-wish-association\/","title":{"rendered":"Seniors need so little, but that little goes a long way: Wish Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seniors need so little, but they need that little so much, says Ingrid Davis of the Senior Wish Association. But those who have what they need have little hesitation with helping their peers who might not be so lucky.<\/p>\n

This a trend Ms. Davis has found as the Aurora chapter of the Senior Wish Association heads into its third season. The past three years have been ones of significant growth for the volunteer organization and, significantly, this holiday season will be their first of the Adopt-a-Floor program.<\/p>\n

In this fledgling initiative, local retirement residences, including Aurora\u2019s Hollandview Trail Retirement Community, have pooled their resources to buy special gifts for each resident of specific floors at Southlake Village, the Newmarket nursing home affiliated with Southlake Regional Health Centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very excited about this because it shows just a real concern, especially at this time of year, when we realise how grateful we are for everything and part of that includes reaching out to others who do not have what we have \u2013 and there are a lot of them,\u201d says Ms. Davis. \u201cEven in an affluent town like Aurora, there are those who are forgotten and very lonely at Christmas. It is just amazing that these residents of a more well-to-do retirement residence are looking out for the needs of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

These needs can be surprisingly simple. <\/p>\n

This year, Ms. Davis and the Senior Wish Foundation are working with a new partner in Chartwell Aurora (formerly Aurora Resthaven) and all community gifts received during this season will go directly to their long-term care residents.<\/p>\n

Helping in this endeavour include not only the public at large, but \u201cincredible support\u201d from the Rotary Club of Aurora, the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre, and Hollandview, who are keen both to help and to keep the money and other donations local.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just shows that Aurora is so supportive of our own and that is why it is just such a pleasure to have this charity operating in Aurora so we can really help our residents and support everybody,\u201d says Ms. Davis. \u201cWhat is very exciting is up until this year, nurses and staff at Chartwell would buy gifts themselves for the residents, or some of the families were asked if they could bring a little bit extra for some of the residents who don\u2019t have gifts. This year we can just show Chartwell Aurora the incredible community spirit and how others are thinking of seniors at Christmas, supporting them, and the nurses and staff get support as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the items on the Chartwell wishlist this year include colourful cushions to brighten up their rooms, small pictures and prints to decorate their walls, large print books, crossword and word search books, calendars with big pictures, photo albums, socks, scarves and costume jewellery for women, sugar free candies, and small blackboards for writing messages and notes for themselves and visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have a big space to live in, so they just need small things, but pretty things to look at, and little indulgences that they may not have enough money to afford on their own,\u201d says Ms. Davis. \u201cMany of them don\u2019t have families who come to visit and, being in a long-term care residence, they don\u2019t necessarily have a lot of money to be able to afford things.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Senior Wish Association is, as the name suggests, a wish-granting organization, operations continue year-round, but are particularly active in the winter and Holiday season. Recently, an area transport company donated a bus to take students from Highview Public School to a long-term care residence in Richmond Hill to perform a Christmas concert.<\/p>\n

They also plan to collaborate once again this February in crafting Valentine\u2019s Day cards for seniors in care and ramp up their efforts to amass volunteer visitors.<\/p>\n

Members of the community have also come forward with their suggestions on how to help, including one local family with six children who have taken it upon themselves to create a Christmas stocking for one male and one female resident in long-term care.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur pleasure will be in sharing the true meaning of Christmas with our family,\u201d they said. \u201cWe choose to remember those older than us out of respect for their contribution over the years to family, work and society. We recognize that those older than us are often forgotten and we want them to know that we will take them forward with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

If any families are interested in following their lead, Ms. Davis says she would be happy to facilitate a connection.<\/p>\n

The Senior Wish Association can be reached via their website at www.seniorwish.org, email at ingrid@aseniorwish.com, or by calling 905-717-0135.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seniors need so little, but they need that little so much, says Ingrid Davis of the Senior Wish Association. But those who have what they need have little hesitation with helping their peers who might not be so lucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2014-12-11-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2ph","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 09:23:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}