Disaster Recovery- Elders, San Antonio Puerto Rico

The distribution of the elderly meals to 50 participants of Proyecto La Nueva Esperanza continued during Saturdays and Sundays. We distributed 1,357 healthy meals. Our driver and a volunteer have been doing this task and the participants told them how pleased they are with this service.

Some other activities during this period were:

Basic need and clothing distribution were done with a University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla Campus students.    We identified seven elders who were in need of goods and we were able to provide them. Some of our participants received paint bucketsbecausewe found that their houses paint was in bad condition. During Christmas our participants received a cordless COB-light switch so they can be in a safety environment during the night, especially if for some reason our community is without the electric power. With the recent January earthquakes our island was without power for several days and the gift was very useful.

Our nurse visited 46 of our participants to follow up their health as they have different conditions and provided hygiene and nutrition orientations.

Two elders were living in infrahuman conditions, the homes in very bad condition, our organization and 16 volunteers cleaned the houses.  There are some other houses to receive similar attention in the future.  We continue with the house reconstruction of participants and elders from the community who were affected by hurricaine Maria,  

Proyecto La Nueva Esperanza provided transportation to medical appointments and governmental agencies to 19 elders. We also were able to get documents like medical prescriptions and laboratory reports for them.

We referred four participants to Senior Center so they can receive a meal from Monday to Friday and a housekeeper. Our housekeeper visited ten participants to clean their homes.  

 Services provided have been possible thanks to our donors.

During this period Proyecto La Nueva Esperanza continued providing meals to our elderly participants on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.  We delivered 1,876 meals to 54 participants and distributed 45 boxes of drinking water.  During August we found that 24 participants were in need of non-perishable goods and we were able to provide them with the help of some volunteers.  

Other services provided were:  contacted medical offices and got appoitments to nine (9) participants, provided transportation to medical appointments to 13 participants and medical plans renewal to two (2) elders.  These services are very important because the elderly health is fragile and need constant follow up.

Our main achievement is related to one of our participant who lived in unhealthy and threatening conditions from people close to him.  Our organization helped him to obtain the requiered documents to get an apartment in an idependent living complex for the elderly.  We helped him with the apartment and electricity deposit.  He has the apartment key and will be moving soon. The participant was very happy and grateful for the support received from our organization.

Thanks to a GlobalGiving grant and in coordination with "Puerto Rico Somos Gente", another non-profit organization, three (3) houses that were damaged by hurricane Maria two years ago were fixed and were still in need.  Other homes will be fix during the next months.

It's important to improve the elders quality with a clean surrounding.  Some of them like to store things and for the next period our organization will be working in this area:  to clean and dispose of any waste.  This will help their hygiene also.

We are very grateful to GlobalGiving donors who can make possible that these services can be provided to low income elders in our community.