Changing the World One Plate at a Time

Yesterday was the culmination/start of a process that begun the moment I arrived in my community. My town has a large proportion of senior citizens, many of whom rarely leave their homes. From the first day, I noticed this and have wanted to do something for this segment. I know many other places have an ‘adultos mayores’ (literally older adults) group that meet regularly which provides important information through workshops, exercise to maintain a better health and most importantly fellowship with other people in town.

So for the first couple months I proposed, offered and asked about the possibility of starting such a group. Though everyone agreed with me about the importance of such a project, no one stepped up to help me get it started and when I brought up the next steps we’d need to do all I heard were the obstacles and barriers that would prevent something like this being set up. After three or four months I decided that this project was not going further and sort of forgot about it.

A month ago, two community members approached me to talk to me about a project idea they had. They wanted to start a group of adultos mayors and wondered if I’d like to help them. Though I must confess that my initial reaction was to think ‘that was MY idea’, I’m so happy for how it all worked out. This is now their project and they have a lot of vested interested to see it to succeed (and it will also mean a lot less work for me)

We got support from the day center in a nearby town to help us set up the group and we invited (through personalized hand delivered invitations) all the adults over 65 in my community (which came to over 50 in a community that has a census of 368) to a meeting yesterday. In this meeting we played some get-to-know-you-better games, did some exercises and then talked about the ideas of setting up the group. 26 people showed up and everyone seemed to have a good time and was excited about forming this group. We are going to meet every other week to start and see where it goes from here!

Yesterday, though I helped throughout the meeting, my main job was to wash dishes before and after for quite a long time (we gave everyone lunch) As many people that I know, I’d love to think that I am living in a way that I’m contributing to this world I live in. So easily I get caught up with wanting to do BIG things (like maybe ending world hunger or opening a school in ones community….) that I forget that it is in the small things that I have the opportunity to help out. So, yesterday, every plate I washed gave me the opportunity to contribute to the world I live in and I am so thankful for such an opportunity. As one of my fellow volunteers once commented: hope and despair are contagious. I want to be spreading hope, even if it is just through a smile.