When Karen Anderson, 62, broke her leg, she needed someone to buy her groceries.
Just after the injury a few months ago, two local volunteers from an organization called Morningside Village came to her apartment to help.
“Two young people came here and said, ‘What do you need?’” said Anderson. They brought her groceries as well as Honeycrisp apples, her favorite kind, from the farmers’ market on Broadway.
Over the last four months, Morningside Village, a local community group, has mobilized a corps of volunteers to help the neighborhood’s seniors age comfortably in their own homes.
The organization is the brainchild of Irene Zola, executive director of the non-profit organization Support Our Seniors and a resident of Morningside Heights. An offshoot of SOS, Morningside Village has expanded since the summer into an active neighborhood network designed to address the needs of local elders.
Volunteers provide seniors with services that range from grocery shopping and hospital visits to simple companionship and conversation, in the region bounded by 110th and 116th streets between Morningside Drive and Riverside Drive.
The program, co-directed by Zola and by Paul Nikolaidis, who also lives in Morningside Heights, held its first volunteer meeting at Bank Street College last September and now includes over 50 volunteers serving 27 elders—10 of whom receive visits almost daily.
“They do good work, and it’s very much needed as people age and things happen,” said Anderson, who is now back on her feet. “Knowing that they’re there is comforting.”
After benefiting from the organization’s services, Anderson has become a volunteer herself, periodically checking in on an elderly woman who lives down the hall.
Barbara Alper has been a volunteer since the program’s inception, and said that her visits include talking, going for walks, and picking up necessities from stores in the neighborhood. A longtime resident of the Upper West Side, she said that her volunteer work has helped her feel a new sense of urban community.
“It broadened my connection to the area. I have lived here for close to 30 years and lived in the same house for 15 years, and through this volunteering and organization, it is the first time I have really made real friends in the neighborhood who have similar interests and concerns,” Alper said.
A former contributing photographer to the New York Times, Alper is currently working on a series of portraits of seniors in Morningside Heights, including a 93-year-old ex-dancer and a 90-year-old lawyer.
“People tend to overlook the elderly and don’t realize the treasure that the elderly really are,” Alper added.
Adriane Gavronsky, BC ’83, another volunteer who has worked as a lawyer in the public sector, said that she is inspired by her interactions with the elderly. “Working with them is incredibly uplifting. Older people share what they have lived,” she said.
Like Anderson, 81-year-old Vincent McConnell is a volunteer as well as a beneficiary of Morningside Village. McConnell, who grew up in Manhattan, lives in the apartment below Zola’s and serves on the program’s steering committee.
This past year McConnell, an actor, suffered a spine fracture. With the help of Morningside Village, he said he is recovering and starting to volunteer again.
“I’ve lived a wonderful, full life, and I try to give back,” he said.
Despite the efforts of volunteers, funding for Morningside Village has always been a challenge.
The organization has survived so far on private donations, but the directors say that they have not been able to provide services to every elder in the area because of limited resources. Nikolaidis said that he and Zola are currently writing proposals for foundation and government grants, and in the meantime are directing many seniors who contact them to other social services agencies.
Zola said that Morningside Village is in tune with a national movement to help seniors “age in place”—an increasingly important effort as elderly populations grow rapidly in the midst of a shrinking economy with rising health care costs.
Driven by the experience of visiting her aging mother in a nursing home, Zola started the program in an effort to address systematic problems in elder care, including underpaid staff and the sometimes demoralizing conditions of nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
In addition to day-to-day services, one of her main goals is to reduce the stigma of aging.
“They’re not in the media. They’re not visible across America,” Zola said. Her home office is graced by a large photograph of the artist Georgia O’Keeffe at 90 years old — an image that she says serves as inspiration. She said, “We’re not used to seeing people with wrinkles.”
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