Area retailers and agencies serving seniors have joined forces with a local senior care service to deliver companionship and gifts to isolated seniors during the holiday season.The area office of Home Instead Senior Care, the world’s largest provider of non-medical home care and companionship for older adults, this year has teamed with Current, Parish Nurses, Life Line, the Girl Scout Wagon Wheel Council and local Wal-Mart Super Center stores to provide presents to seniors who otherwise might not receive a gift this holiday season.Last year, 7,000 volunteers delivered gifts to more than 53,000 seniors throughout North America.”‘Be a Santa to a Senior’ is more than just a gift-giving project. The program is designed to help stimulate human contact and social interaction for seniors who are unlikely to have guests during the holidays,” said Kathryn Curry, owner of the Home Instead Senior Care in Colorado Springs, Monument and Woodland Park areas.The program begins Nov. 21 and runs through Dec. 14. Local nonprofit organizations will identify seniors in the community who will be spending the holidays alone or who may not receive any gifts and provide their names to Home Instead Senior Care. Christmas trees, which will feature ornaments with the first names only of the seniors and their respective gift requests, will go up Nov. 21 in the Wal-Mart Super Center stores located at 1575 Space Center Drive and 5550 East Woodman Road.Holiday shoppers can pick up an ornament – as they did last year from 720 retailers nationally – buy the items on the list and return them unwrapped to the store, along with the ornament attached. Home Instead Senior Care’s volunteers will collect, wrap and distribute the gifts to the seniors. A citywide gift-wrapping day will be held on Dec. 14.For more information, contact Home Instead Senior Care at 719-534-0908. Businesses can also call to adopt groups of seniors.The program runs from Nov. 21 through Dec. 9.
