January
Spotlight
An eighty-two-year-old Harwich woman is discharged from Cape Cod Hospital's Emergency Room. She has no way home. No family or friends able to help. No money for a taxi to the Lower Cape. Too frail to face the challenge public transportation can be for the elderly.
Reaching Elders with Additional Community Help (REACH) is a program of the Cape & Islands Emergency Medical Services (CIEMS) that reaches out to older adults finding themselves in this situation. Through a partnership with the Cape Cod Hospital, Emergency Center social workers are able to connect through REACH to a volunteer from the elder's own local Council on Aging (COA).
The Council on Aging works with REACH to train volunteers willing to assist by providing a ride home from the hospital, picking up prescriptions, and getting the person "squared away" once home by walking him or her inside and checking to see if he or she needs anything, maybe even getting a cup of tea or making a sandwich.
The eighty-two-year-old woman from Harwich mentioned earlier needed her prescriptions picked up. The volunteer noticed that one of the prescriptions was for a breathing device that was new and unfamiliar to the woman. The volunteer alerted the REACH coordinator. REACH, together with its COA partner, was then able to get a retired RN volunteer to assist the Harwich resident in understanding the correct way to fill and use the new device to enable better breathing. This assistance very likely prevented a return visit later that night to the emergency room.
REACH not only connects volunteer and community resources with those who need them but it also builds coalitions and strengthens collaborations among Cape community service providers.
To volunteer for REACH, please contact 508-771-4510 or email us at reach@ciemss.org. |
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What's in a Name?
by Allen Larson, President
Cape Cod Center for Sustainability
 Twenty years ago this month, an ice arena opened in Dennis named after Tony Kent. The anniversary of this event has passed quietly. Its significance deserves remembrance.
The world was far different then. The Cape was too. The early and mid-1980s was a period of rapid population growth across the Cape. People streamed in to buy vacation homes and to live here permanently. The influx was so strong that local residents began to meet to determine how to slow development's pace. Town meetings began to purchase tracts of land more aggressively to preserve open space.
With new growth, priorities began to change regarding the Cape's lifestyle. Year-round residential communities sought to calm down the "American Graffiti" aspects of Route 28. The public's awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving was increasing.
New neighborhoods opposed the idea of concerts that had been commonly held at the old Cape Cod Coliseum in South Yarmouth. Problems with the building's ice infrastructure also made it difficult for the facility to prosper, and the owners sold it in 1984. The closing of the Coliseum displaced the network of hockey and skating activity that had long been as connected to winter living on the Cape as fishing in the summer.
Against this backdrop, residents began to consider possible options. MORE
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Revitalizing A Community
by Tom Moccia, President
Buzzards Bay Vitalization Association
 How do you motivate a community that has been languishing for almost a half century? The question is compounded by a prevailing skepticism over the manifold promises to address Bourne's Main Street/Buzzards Bay that were never delivered, for one reason or another-mostly a lack of public resources and of community leadership, or both, further manifested by indifference and lack concern by landowners.
After many meetings of still interested and devoted residents and businesses, a consensus was reached to restructure the various village and neighborhood groups into a Buzzards Bay and Main Street association with corporate powers and access to resources to allow it to adopt a business plan for the entire area from Veterans' Circle to the west to Belmont Circle to the east and from the north side of the Cape Cod Canal to the north side of the Bypass Road.
Thus the creation of the Buzzards Bay Village Association, Inc., now d/b/a the Buzzards Bay Vitalization Association (BBVA). MORE
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All In A 'Day in the Life'
Submitted by our Readers |
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Dune Shacks
 The Provincetown Community Compact, Inc. is pleased to announce the 2008 residency program for C-Scape & Fowler Dune Shacks. This novel program, which is a collaboration with the Cape Cod National Seashore, offers one and three week residencies for artists and the general public beginning in April. A $500 fellowship and a three-week summer residency will be offered to one visual artist and two one-week residencies for writers. The application deadline is February 15, 2008.
Tom Boland, a historic preservationist in Provincetown, manages the program and the conservation of the shack. The program's mission is to honor the historic use of the dune shacks, which are located within the Peaked Hill Bars National Register Historic District. For more information, please call 508-487-0045 or email The Compact.
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DECA Judges Needed
 It is that time of the school year when Marketing Teachers need your valued assistance at the District 1 DECA Conference. DECA needs outstanding and caring Business Leaders to judge the DECA competion at the Sea Crest Conference Center in Falmouth on Thursday, January 31st.
If you have any questions or are interested in volunteering as a judge, please email Cory Rogers or call 774-406-1161. For more information on DECA, please visit the website.
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Think Outside the Box
 The Cape Cod Museum of Natural History invites you to: "Thinking Out of the Box: An Introduction to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Critical & Creative Thinking". Being held on Saturday, February 9, 2008 from 10:00am to 2:00pm, it is a FREE four-hour workshop where participants will "practice" thinking as we introduce Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory and discuss Critical and Creative Thinking in an organizational setting.
For more information or to RSVP by February 1, 2008, please call 508.896.3867 ext 133. We look forward to seeing you there!
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Send Us Your Stuff!
 The newsletter editors are looking to share funny, warm, or touching stories from nonprofits and volunteers from their daily experiences from the office, board and committee meetings, or out in the field.
We'll make a $25 donation for any stories or photographs that we publish.
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