Cultivate – a Veterans Fund grantee of Community Foundation Boulder County – is working to connect local veterans by incentivizing younger vets to drive older, more isolated vets to Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities.
Cultivate – a Veterans Fund grantee of Community Foundation Boulder County – is working to connect local veterans by incentivizing younger vets to drive older, more isolated vets to Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities.
“I learned that veterans are very, very, very much underserved,” says Regis Lindsay, Outreach Manager for Cultivate, which recently changed its name from CareConnect. “With the help of Karen Townsend [Boulder County Veterans Services], Justin Brandenburg at the Boulder Vet Center, and Rex Laceby with CU Boulder’s Office of Veteran Services, I also learned that you need to earn trust with veterans before you can help them.”
The results of that kind of commitment speak for themselves: from Jan. 1, 2017 through May 31, 2018, Cultivate provided 5,183 rides to Boulder County seniors through its Medical Mobility program. Of those, 975 were veterans. And of those, according to Regis, 221 of the rides provided were to VA facilities.
“That’s pretty great,” Regis says. “Because the VA facilities we drive to are as far away as Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Loveland, Golden and Denver. Our program is really unique – not just here, but in the country. Seniors and vets whose siblings or children live elsewhere can’t believe the services we provide.”
Cultivate’s Medical Mobility for Vets program is just one of several services the nonprofit provides, all of which are offered to Boulder County seniors free of charge. “To fulfill our mission to help seniors flourish, and reconnect – as both recipients and contributors – with their surrounding communities, we provide five main services,” explains Shun-Luoi Fong, Cultivate Director of Communications. “In addition to our Medical Mobility program, our Carry-Out Caravan program takes orders and delivers groceries to clients in Longmont and Boulder, our Fix-It program helps seniors maintain their homes, and our IceBuster and YardBuster programs help seniors with their snow shoveling and yard maintenance needs.”
According to Shun-Luoi, skilled volunteers provide everything from plumbing and electrical services to basic home repairs through Cultivate’s Fix-It program, including a quickly growing number of grab bar installations. And some 55 clients in Longmont and 65 clients in Boulder rely on the Carry-Out Caravan program every week.
“Demand for our programs is really increasing,” adds Shun-Luoi. “We encourage all community members to spread the word about available services, and to engage in dialogue with one another to better understand and address the needs of seniors in our community, and to benefit from interactions with seniors.”
Concludes Regis, “We couldn’t provide these services without our volunteers. They’re passionate, they love what they do, and they love making connections with seniors. Volunteers are key to what we do.”
