Loving is Caring

Following the Family Mask Photo Contest, UAC kept its focus on the vulnerable group hit hardest by COVID-19: seniors in nursing homes. UAC launched a Love Bag campaign to send care to nursing home staff and residents, and it drew an enthusiastic response from many communities and from friends we had never met. In total, the campaign delivered 350 love bags to Cabrini nursing home in Westchester County, New York: 100 bags made for the night-shift staff went out just before Labor Day, and 250 bags for the residents were delivered in late September.

Cabrini nursing home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, is a large facility with 304 beds. During the pandemic, to keep the virus out, it restricted residents’ outdoor activities and visits from family and friends, leaving the seniors alone in their rooms for long stretches. Even in July and August, when the outbreak eased a little, they could only see their loved ones through a window. To show the seniors we care and to cheer them on, UAC launched this Love Bag campaign. The bags for staff contained small bottles of hand sanitizer, KN95 masks, candy and thank-you cards; the bags for residents also included memory card games, small crafts, mini Rubik’s cubes and other little toys to help pass the lonely hours.

The highlight of these 350 love bags: thank-you cards and love cards hand-drawn by children! UAC put out a call for young artists, and parents from New York, Connecticut and New Jersey responded with great support. Special thanks to the local Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Chinese schools and churches; thanks to all their efforts, UAC received 384 thank-you and love cards in total. With drawings that are simple but full of childlike warmth, the children showed their care for the seniors and encouraged them to stay strong. All the artwork is collected in the video, and we are sure you can feel the love and warmth in it.

Our most heartfelt thanks to every child and parent who took part! Before these loving works touched the seniors, they had already touched the heart of everyone on the UAC team. UAC volunteers did their best to include every piece; please forgive us if any were missed.

Several businesses also supported the campaign. Thanks to NY Heartland organic store for sponsoring red quinoa cookies and plum-essence gummies, chosen with the seniors’ health in mind. However, out of concern that candy could be a choking hazard for the seniors, the UAC volunteers decided, after internal discussion and talking with the nursing home, to take all the gummies back out of the packed bags.

Thanks also to Bodai Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant in New York, which donated six dollars from every box sold in its Mid-Autumn mooncake charity sale to the Love Bag campaign. It is the generosity of donors like these that made this campaign possible.

UAC was also lucky to have a group of young volunteers help sort and pack the bags, which became UAC’s first in-person gathering after months of connecting online during the pandemic. On September 19, in a park in Westchester, UAC volunteers wearing special UAC masks placed the love cards into the bags one by one, completing the last step of making the love bags. Finally, local young Scouts went to Cabrini on behalf of UAC and delivered our gifts to the nursing home’s front door. According to the Cabrini staff, the seniors loved the little gifts.

UAC will keep organizing more activities to care for the elderly, and we hope to inspire more people to pass warmth and love on to those who need it most during the pandemic. Love is the best medicine in the world, and a source of courage and confidence.

If you or your volunteer team would like to join, partner with, or otherwise support UAC, please visit the UAC website or leave us a message here: uac-heroes.org/contact

Smiles – we hope to see them on the faces of all the seniors

Thank-you notes from the seniors

Our little volunteers who helped with the packing. Looking at the children’s hopeful smiles, don’t all your worries just melt away?

Behind the scenes – passing on the first Love Bag

Not long after the love bags were done, the little sister of a girl next door sprained her ankle. The three girls who had helped pack the love bags each made their own “love bag” to cheer her up. They gathered up all kinds of treats and toys into little gift bags, and then couldn’t stop arguing over whose love bag was the best 🤣

Acknowledgements:

All the parents and young artists who supported this campaign

Girl Scouts of Hudson, Troop 1686 & Troop 2429

Boy Scouts of Danbury, Troop 252

Cub Scouts Pack 24, Dobbs Ferry

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – Primary

Danbury Chinese Alliance church

NY Heartland organic store

Bodai Cafe vegetarian restaurant, Flushing