The other day at Keep Well, a fellow volunteer said, “We’ve been doing this a long time.” We added up the years and yes, we have been volunteers with Keep Well for 29 years.
For Elise Shepherd, it started with a phone call. “Many of us, volunteers and participants, have been with Keep Well since the beginning.
In my case, a friend called me. “Keep Well needs a nurse to take blood pressure for seniors one day a week.”
I thought: How hard could that be, and why not? I enjoyed everyone I met that very first day and I just stayed on.”
Keep Well started with a vision of a community health and wellness program for seniors, operated by volunteers.
“Sheila Jones, who had worked with seniors on the North Shore, had just retired. She knew there were others like her with skills and experience to contribute,” Elise explains.
“The idea was to encourage seniors to be responsible for their own health. As we go through life, our needs change. Keep Well offers education, resources and support to help seniors recognize these changes, to adapt to them and to thrive.”
In 1987, after much planning, commitment and energy, Keep Well was launched at North Shore Neighbourhood House.
In the 30 years since, Keep Well has grown to include over 150 volunteers and serve over 10,000 seniors in the course of a year at eight sites across the North Shore.
Volunteers are retired health professionals, educators, and business people. Others contribute special skills to the weekly gatherings. Elise, a retired registered nurse, also contributes the experience she gained from living in other cultures.
For Elise and her husband, their first journey was ambitious. The plan was to make their way to England, travel overland and reach Australia eventually.
Off they went, across Europe and the Middle East, through Afghanistan and Iran to India, where their journey ended a few miles, and an ocean, short of Australia.
A few years later, when the Shepherd family included two youngsters, they headed off to Bangladesh on assignment with the Canadian International Development Agency. A few years after that came two years in Switzerland.
The family had been back home in North Vancouver for about a year on the day Elise picked up the phone and said yes to an invitation to help local seniors.
“For our family, living in other countries was temporary. We knew we would be returning home to Canada. Still, that feeling of not belonging, of not knowing the ropes, helped me later on to understand something of how life is for immigrants in a new country.
“And, when I meet newcomers and they learn I have been in their country, it makes a bond. A connection is established.”
Connection might be the most valuable service Keep Well provides.
“Everyone looks out for one another.
“On my first day back at Keep Well after the summer break, we caught up with everyone’s activities and inquired after those who missed the session. I called them later that afternoon. Thankfully, all was well and they were with us the next week.”
In addition to the personal connections made at Keep Well, the organization has become a trusted resource.
In the 30 years since it was founded, Keep Well has evolved into a very effective network on the North Shore.
“It’s because of our volunteers,” says Elise.
“Most of us are retired professionals using our skills, training and experience to help seniors. We know the resources available and we know our participants well, so that we can match needs with services.”
Society runs on networks. Large or small, complex or simple, networks make the wheels go round.
Some of the most effective are the quietest, the most unassuming. Were they to be removed from society, life would become much more complicated.
We can perceive ourselves as living networks, connected by the essentials of health: nutrition, exercise and socialization.
It’s up to us to maintain our own personal health by tending those connections. Keep Well is an essential element in the network that supports seniors on the North Shore, a network based on the help and care provided by its dedicated volunteers.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or email her at [email protected].
