hi i'm tom callahan and welcome to all the seniors the show where we talk about senior issues and the solutions that can take to solve them and we're also going to talk today about resources for the senior community here in princeton if you have been to visit t is the princeton senior resource center the princeton senior research center is a nonprofit organization that was started over forty years ago it serves the seniors of this community princeton and the greater community of central new jersey eastern pennsylvania we have lots of people who come from yardley and and new hope who are engaging our classes in our lecturers in our luncheon learns in our fundraising activities throughout the year we try to provide not only wonderful activities and classes but also the resources that many people in their forty's and fifty's who are dealing with their older parents may need when do we need to have help for you know mom and dad when does somebody need to downsize from their current single family home to to assisted living or to a community dwelling and we have both social workers and program directors and myself who does development and fundraising we get some of our funding from the township of princeton but the majority eighty percent over eighty percent comes from different events that we that we do and class fees and many free and open to the public events and lectures and what are some of the events that you do at your community center for insta programming is one thing i just think is phenomenal right now you have ted talks we have we have ted talks that are weekly we have movies we have opera we have a phenomenal set of people who play ping pong three times a week for hours it's amazing with stamina we have a signature program for us is the evergreen forum which is this semester will have twenty eight classes and they could be on anything they could be analyzing this the sunday times science section and the instructor will assign three of the articles that were in that paper and then they will discuss it the following week two woody allen movies two chinese art two fx of world politics i mean these are courses that are taught by past professors past industry captains people who are very knowledgeable in their fields and they share it with about five hundred eighty people i think are signed up for the spring semester which will be starting next week i think it was about three years ago i took one of the evergreen form classes and it was fantastic it met once a week for about two hours great discussions in its adult school during the day out school during the day it just i met some wonderful people in the class who we connected afterwards and actually the gentleman who was teaching we invited him to come in to kind of a follow up thing right or dinner one night it was fantastic if you haven't taken advantage of the evergreen form at the princeton but it's back by popular demand we had a lot of people who said what happened to brunch it's a one day event with many steps leading up to that one day but on may seventh this year about three hundred baskets will be made there they're filled with lox with bagels with cream cheese a quiche fresh fruit juice assorted condiments that go along with that the cream cheese the jam the the into the center that day on may seventh from about five thirty in the morning to nine we construct these baskets we do quality control to make sure that every basket has everything it needs in it and then we've got a phenomenal team of volunteers again who drive and deliver those baskets in and around princeton pennington kingston east windsor west windsor hamilton hopewell  so it's south brunswick if you're if you're in one of those areas we take about a twelve mile twelve to fifteen mile radius and we deliver that basket by nine thirty that morning and it's enough wonderful food for two people we have a lot of people who will gather their book group or bath or gather their neighbors and order three or four baskets and meet all at one person's house and it's it's really a fun fun fun event who can buy one of these baskets absolutely anybody and the fact that we're doing it a week before mother's day means it's a great mother state gift but one thing that i have thought was a couple of companies have have done this in the past years is if used as a corporate gift real estate agents who just sold a home may do it as a welcome basket you know somebody has been in the in their house for you know a month and it's a great gift is a real it aired to go give it to somebody for the local investment firm you've got him bring is the biggest real estate season there is is you've got corporate investors who you know  might say to their best clients or to some of their you know clients who they haven't reached out to in a while and order say eight or eight or nine baskets and have us deliver them we encourage individuals to just get it for themselves others who may not be able to make it you know on mother's day with their with their family or or father's day or whatever to send it to their to send to their parents so it's really open to anybody you can buy one you can buy one for yourself and send one off to somebody else you can buy ten of them as i said our target is about three hundred that's a lot of assembly and a lot of delivery but it's it's the energy that morning is phenomenal and we get boy scouts to help us we get girl scouts to help us we get high school students we get corporate volunteers as i said before it's a wonderful opportunity to reach out now who can receive one of these baskets so again anybody can receive it you know i couple of years ago i had a bunch of coworkers and we all gathered one morning we sent it to one person's house we had three baskets that went over there and the seven or eight of us sat down and you know demolished it had a great time absolutely anybody can receive it we do you know as i said we do limit about a fifteen that because what we have as part of p s r c we we do a lot of social service counseling often to lower income families that are on a housing assistance throughout the princeton  community and our social service professionals will often recommend that they've got a couple of people who maybe are not socializing as much as they should or may just need a little encouragement a little love nobody's reached out to them in a while and so one of the options that we have on the basket is is that you can you know buy one but you can also donate one and we generally will wi deliver them to that community to anybody you know but but to that community we are social service staff have identified those households that we think just could use that little from the picture it's you know there and it gets dropped at your door the door bell gets wrong and the driver departs so we do want people to be there so we send everybody a card and then we also remind them that week ahead  time that we're sending them out so that they know to wait for them and if you're going to you know if you have an early morning obligation if you if you go off to services or something it'll be there at your door this is a pretty safe community and  have found that people of come home it ten o'clock and found that the basket is waiting for them and they're delighted so it's even a great way you mention is being a corporate gift so it's even a great way for a corporation to do some outreach in a way that you know it is go corporations say hey how would you like to buy twenty five baskets and just donate them so it's another option out there if you have a company in your thinking of doing some outreach i think it's such a good idea it is it's that lovely opportunity you you mentioned you know one things was really city agents and you know people who have businesses i would strongly suggest that if you do have a business and you want to thank somebody you know a good basket like this on a sunday it really makes a statement now how can people get involved with this so there are a couple of different ways we have an organizing committee as i said you're you're part of it they can call me at my office at the senior center six zero nine nine two four seven one zero eight they can you know and or e mail me and my e mails pretty simple it's be prince like royalty at princeton senior dot  org and just indicate that you want to be a volunteer either on the committee where and the committing is helping to gather the food helping to get corporate involvement we we do a really nice journal for most of our offense at the princeton senior resource center so we take ads we have ads and sponsorships we also have an opportunity to write articles so we we will include some articles in our journal so that it's really useful and covers a lot of the topics that you cover with only sr and you know how to vacation with your friends how to enjoy the best of health we pride ourselves on having an add journal that provides the resources that makes princeton senior resource center so special because that is what we do we provide resources for people and our journal just reflects that so we have ads from people who have you know our companies that we utilize that we promote some that are our corporate sponsors throughout the year we get you know wonderful support by companies like mccaffrey and merrill lynch and i don't know i probably shouldn't name any because i'm going to obviously missed some but a lot of the law firms in town archer law has has been a consistent sponsor and it's a way for us to provide the information to our community now how do you need to people to be involved would you need help on so we need we certainly need help the day of on may seventh early in the morning and you are done by ten o'clock in the morning you're out of there the rest of the day is yours but it you know somewhere between six o'clock and ten o'clock if you can give us a couple of hours of time to assemble the baskets or to drive the baskets that's the easy easy easy a little bit more involved is if you want to help on the committee where we are gathering resources for the food and for the journal and again they can contact me and be prints at princeton sr dot would say these baskets just don't happen in one day they obviously need to be ordered and when are they available to be what they will be available to be ordered beginning of march it will be in our newsletter we have a great print newsletter as it will it'll be in there so the very beginning of march will be able to order them you can order them online you can order them at our center which is at forty five stockton it's the known as the susan patterson building and paterson building it's right behind the old borough hall for those who are familiar with princeton right this sort of the intersection of two a six into a six and they can order them one we have an order form and that will also be on line c can order it online and there will be a link on our website and when do orders need to be in by they should be in by april thirteenth  that will give us enough time to make sure the that the gift if it's a gift basket that they get they get their notice that they get their invitation that says you will be receiving this wonderful basket from you know susan or mary or whoever who is giving it to you and it gives us time to do the writing and make sure that everybody will get it by nine thirty in the morning because the rounding is a big job you've got to figure out where about three hundred baskets are going to if they're not being kicked up going back to the baskets just don't happen in a day what do you need for these baskets what we need is as many items as  possible that can be donated so you don't have to donate everything if you are a company that if you're one of the local hotels for instance and you already have those little cream cheese packets we're looking for three hundred of them it would be fabulous to have you know some of them donated it to us if you are one of the local businesses that might have small jams or tea or coffee if you want to make a sponsorship your name gets listed on the item in the basket so that it not only says it's a bunch at home basket but it'll say such and such is donated by whatever your company name is and it's a great way to sort of go into the home so you're not only in the journal but you're right there listed on the on the little tea bags in a little coffee that's being delivered we try to make it as complete a basket as we can so that if somebody drinks tea there's tea in there for somebody drinks coffee so if you are a company that might have those little packets of coffee and wish to donate some of them not perhaps all three hundred of them but say twenty five or fifty of them we welcome that whenever whatever gets donated to us does not need to get purchase which means that as a fundraiser it provides us a bigger net revenue to be quite honest about you know funding and that money goes towards making sure that we have the resources that we have the social service staff and that we can run the programs like the evergreen forum and you know make you have our center open five days a week almost all year round it all year round but i think we're off for you know christmas and new years and you know a few special holidays so you don't necessarily have to be a food vendor now if you donate to the basket you do not think you can even be a you know you could be a sponsor easily you could be  a law firm that says hey i want to cover the cost of the coffee or i want to cover the cost of the bagels or or the smoked salmon i mean we have lovely smoked salmon and bagels and cream cheese that are in there so yes we we welcome corporate sponsors who can you know step up and say hey i don't have that but i'm happy to help you purchase it or do you want like a corporate sponsor do you want them actually doing the teabags themselves or would just prefer to have the funds sent to you in order to go out and purchase things for the basket that may be a whole lot easier for you to just donate it to us but if you want to make sure that we have all of the funds and you want an out and you you know everything else either works where we're really flexible stuff just give me a call and we're happy to talk about it now what about people who aren't corporations can a basic just an individual from town just donate something thank you i mean you know an extra case of teabags in my house that i maybe bought for a party can i bring that by and drop that will you quit if you do it early enough i mean what i don't want to end up with we are not a food bank so we you know where this particular items or these items is we need x number of so many of them and sometimes when you just ask people to drop stuff off they're all very generous and they do that but then i have eight hundred you know or twelve day for that i'm sure that for that week leading up to this event there's a lot of things that need to be done there are and there are that's a wonderful extension of volunteer time we do gather on saturday saturday the six before that and a lot of the pre assembly will happen on the six so i'm you know always in need of about twenty volunteers on that day as well that gets everything ready so that the assembly line can start bright and early on sunday morning so yes tell us about the assembly on on sunday morning it's great it's fun we have we have a corporate partner that helps us with a lot of our projects is is bloomberg but we are certainly not limited to just bloomberg as corporate partners but often they will come and the employees will come in that bring their kids it's a great opportunity if you've got if you've got a child who's twelve or thirteen or a high school student who needs to do community service this is a perfect you know it's for five contained hours you're in you're out you as i said you walk around to the basket you fill up the basket the basket gets packaged and both gets tied to it and it gets put in the line for delivery and there are a ton of opportunities that they don't need a tremendous amount of skill and it's and it is fun to see everybody come together we take a group  shot we send it out as a thank you i didn't bring one of them but we got a great postcard that we usually make it after the event and thank all of our volunteers we count that we work with the local high schools who often they they call us and say we've got you know high school students who need community service again this is a great opportunity for community service we do have bloomberg who helps us a lot but we've had other we've had p s e and g and other companies v i believe has has a big corporate volunteer program and so we try and engage them as well if they have employees who want to help but we also have individuals i have a couple of friends who come every task and it is one of those jobs as you said that gets done ahead of time as orders come in and we get the addresses and we have to route just like you're u p s where you're fed ex guy you know we do a route so that each driver gets a map they get the address and the number of baskets that will get delivered to each house because as i said some people have book group that they'll meet in four or five baskets will go to one location  so the each each driver will go off in their direction and i do trying to learn if they tell me that they live in in pennington i'll give them a pending can route so that at the end of it they just go home they this go directly home wherever that's possible try and do that we have three hundred baskets so we probably need about thirty drivers each each driver gets about ten ask gets and delivers them and we try and give them a small radius is as possible programs we have luncheon learns on a monthly basis actually several months we have as you said the evergreen forum we have our social workers so that the proceeds that come into our who deal with anybody clients we've run programs throughout the week on grieving or downsizing  or getting rid of the clutter in your home you're not going to move but you your children come over to your house and go mom and dad you really need to clean out some of the clutter so the proceeds that we get keep our operating costs  going and we try and make them as reasonable as we can whenever we have a program we try and keep the pricing is as affordable as possible and again hello would somebody get in touch with people they would get in touch with me through my e mail which is b as in barbara prince p r i and c at princeton sr dot org or they can call the center at six zero nine nine two four seven one zero order form is right online it will be online it is not at the moment but it will be in the beginning of march beginning of march and you have until what date to order these april thirteenth ok so that's from march first to people thirteen to order these items from that home makes a great gift and it also makes for a great volunteer opportunity barbara thank you for being on the only seniors i'm glad we're able to discuss this great program and this wonderful opportunity to serve the princeton community if you haven't had a chance to visit the princeton senior resource center you're missing out it's a phenomenal organization that really goes beyond just being go there programming really engage as the