Vida’s Giving Tuesday

Dear Friend of Vida Senior Centers and the Abuelitos,

 Imagine yourself elderly, poor, living in a country far away from home, a country where the people around you seem very busy always, where you often have trouble understanding what they say or what they mean, where you are not sure they really see you.  This is what Vida’s clients - the abuelitos – seniors from many different Latin American countries - feel like.  Mostly elderly women, many living alone, they have different stories of how life brought them here to Washington DC, but all of them work hard at staying independent, at aging-in-place, at creating a community for themselves with others just like them. This has been a particularly difficult year for them. Like all of us, they had to find ways of dealing with COVID-19 and Vida Senior Centers, their life-line, their deliverer of food security, their Spanish speaking home away from home, was closed by the virus until  mid-June.  Even now, five months later, space and pandemic restrictions keep many of them from attending on-site programs. The social activities, the daily human interactions they so relied on, all but ceased. Vida has moved all programs on-line and generous donors have ensured all seniors have handheld devices and WIFI access to participate electronically. But it is not the same!  The holidays are coming and Vida asks you to help us make sure that the abuelitos are not forgotten. We are preparing gift baskets for each and every one of them for Christmas. Your gift of $25, $50, $100 or more will ensure that each will get a $25 gift card, a bag of apples, oranges and pears, crackers, and cheese.  We will have cards for them, games, books, puzzles and coloring books. Giving Tuesday is a world-wide day of giving.  Make it YOUR day of giving as well.

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