Cards for Care by Savannah

Cards for Care by Savannah - January 2024 Scholarship Essay

Isolation. Loneliness. Everyone felt these during the pandemic. But they hit a certain demographic much harder. Senior living homes were filled with elders who couldn’t be with their source of connection to the outside world: family. Loneliness hit them hard. I felt a connection when I learned of their inability to have visitors; their only connection through screens most didn’t understand how to operate. My dad, a recruiter for senior living companies received secondhand accounts of their suffering.
Once I heard their stories, I knew I had to do something, which is why I started Cards for Care. Cards for Care is a nonprofit that sends out homemade holiday cards to 1,100+ senior living communities across the country, many of which are in my hometown. It started out with my best friend and me drawing cute holiday cards for Christmas. We then scanned the cards and sent them digitally to communities where they could print them or use our digital animation to bring seniors joy. After the first holiday, I received at least eight different emails detailing how excited and overjoyed the seniors were to receive our homemade cards.
With that motivation, I kept Cards for Care going, adding new friends and volunteers to help draw cards digitally or physically. I managed everyone who helped and maintained relations with the communities’ operators so I could make sure that the seniors were still satisfied. Cards for Care touched the hearts of at least 15,000 senior citizens at a time when they were the loneliest. Instead of feeling forgotten about or isolated, they could remember that someone is always thinking of them.
My favorite email that I received from a community operator detailed one specific instance with a senior. He had been upset and irritable for the duration of the holiday season because his daughter just had a baby that spring and he was missing his grandchild’s first Christmas. But he got a card that we sent and he smiled so wide and was so much happier for the rest of Christmas. One card could change a person’s entire day.