A Tribute to Our Senior Center Volunteers (We Need More!)

by Russ Alman, WVSAC Communications Director

Senior Center volunteers meet with Santa at our volunteer appreciation party on December 16.

On December 16, we took time to celebrate our volunteers with an appreciation party. Class with a Glass in downtown Wenatchee helped us out and hosted this year's event, and we even were able to pull some strings and get Santa to take time out of his busy schedule and deliver gifts to the group. Nancy Berry, owner of Class with a Glass, was nice enough to snap a few photos of the event for us. Those are included in the photo gallery at the bottom of this article.

As 2023 draws to a close, we want to take this opporutunity to publicly thank all of the volunteers who help out at the Wenatchee Valley Senior Activity Center. Being an indepently-funded nonprofit organization, we are heavily reliant on volunteers for many of our programs and operations. We have volunteers who help manage our front desk, teach classes, organize events, check people in for our $5 lunch program, and process donations in our Second Chance Thrift Shop. It's safe to say that our organization would not be able to run without the help of our corps of volunteers.

It's also worth mentioning that our board of directors is entirely volunteer based. In fact, many of our board members also actively volunteer their time to perform other tasks in both the senior center and the thrift shop. This group of people bring to us a diverse combination of professional and life experience that are key to efficiently operating our organization on a limited budget and providing the vision to continue our mission to serve the local senior community as it continues to grow and change.

Like many nonprofit organizations, our base of volunteers took a huge hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was even tougher on us than most. As an organization that serves a high-risk group for COVID, we were one of the first to close our doors and one of the last to reopen. After being completely closed down for over two years, we essentially had to rebuild our volunteer base from scratch.

We continue to rebuild our volunteer corps, but frankly, it's been a struggle to fill all of our needs. Because we are open on weekdays, we need people who are available between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and of course, most people who work are only available during evenings and weekends. Also, since the majority of our volunteers are seniors themselves, there are physical tasks that they cannot do.

As we enter a new year, please consider volunteerism as one of your resolutions. At the senior center, we need volunteers of all ages that can help us with everything you can imagine. If you have a skill and a few extra hours each month, we can find something for you to do! We particularly need people who can volunteer 1-2 hours on a consistent schedule, even if it's just once a week or once a month. 

​If you're interested in helping out, please contact Lisa Blair, our program director, at [email protected], give us a call at (509) 662-7036, or just stop in at our front desk.