April 2013 Covering Brewster, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans and Wellfleet
More Info:
NausetNeighbors.org
508-514-7067 |
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Gushing
 Sometimes members are so profoundly grateful that they call our number and gush to a call manager. That happened the other day. One member couldn’t praise
Brian Eastman enough for his help with her bookkeeping, going on about how special he was and that she was able to sleep peacefully that night because of his help. When we hear such things, we also feel good. Many of our members feel this way and have shared it with us and with our volunteers. Maya Angelou said, “When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
Modus Operandi
What’s your M.O.? Nauset Neighbors has existed now for over two years, and a pattern is becoming discernible.
Some of our volunteers like to help one or two members again and again, and we assume they are getting to know each other, enjoy each other’s company, and are forming friendships, sometimes with people in their own neighborhoods whom they didn’t know previously. Others like to fill requests for many different members, to meet new people, to go to new neighborhoods in other towns, to wonder what the day will bring. And of course there are those who combine both M.O.’s. They have their favorites, but will take anyone who fits into their schedule. What’s yours?
ID’s
It has been brought to our attention that some of our volunteers would like a badge identifying them as Nauset Neighbors volunteers, not only to identify them to members when they first meet them but also in situations like doctors’ offices to make their relationship to the member immediately clear to office personnel. Among the suggestions was a badge on a lanyard with our logo that would be worn around the neck similar to badges worn by doctors and nurses. If enough volunteers want them, we will be happy to order them. If you would like a lanyard ID, please let us know.
Flexible
As you all know, we are always looking for new volunteers, although we already have over two hundred. Are we greedy?
We will never have enough volunteers because members tell their friends how helpful we are, and because adult children, nieces and nephews who hear about the village movement sweeping the nation call us on behalf of their parents, aunts and uncles living on the cape. However, we cannot accept new members without new volunteers.
In speaking with many of our volunteers, one of the selling points about volunteering for Nauset Neighbors is that the commitment is flexible. You can help someone on your schedule and availability as often as you wish. So won’t you please emphasize that to one of your friends, and give them the feel-good opportunity to make someone else’s life a little easier and their world a little better?
Variety
On a typical day, April 2, our online signup sheet offered a smorgasbord of ways for volunteers to provide services to increase the quality of life of our members,
and the volunteers could choose the member, time and geographic area. Several of our neighbors requested rides to a variety of health related appointments, including doctors, dentists and a podiatrist. Others sought transportation to the hairdresser, the COA for lunch, the supermarket, a meeting, and to visit her sister at a local nursing home. A children’s writer was looking for a friendly visit, a member with low vision needed his email and mail sorted, another member wanted someone to sit with her husband while she did some errands, and several others needed errands run. The services were requested for this week, next month, and beyond. It is all there for our volunteers to pick and choose. It is as satisfying as any culinary smorgasbord.
By far the most interesting request: One of our members keeps bees, and her beekeeping buddy cannot work with her this year because of family illness. Is there anyone out there who knows about bees and can lend a hand!!??
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- Esther Elkin
Nauset Neighbors now has 163 members in 137 households. They are being helped by 214 volunteers, about 60% of whom have been active within the last three months. March services remained near our all-time high. We delivered about 160 services for the third month in a row making nearly 500 services for the first quarter of 2013. The total number of services in the past 52 weeks is 1673.
Volunteers are still filling about 75% of all services via online signup, reducing the number of calls and emails that need to be sent out. Members are now requesting rides to medical appointments well in advance, which helps fill them online. We have 112 future services, half of which already have volunteers assigned.
We added only one new volunteers in March. With many volunteers away this month, our existing volunteers have stepped up their involvement significantly.
-Dick Elkin
Each of us, members and volunteers alike, has our own unique story, some unusual and surprising, some rising to the level of compelling and enchanting. We're not a bunch of creepy old people. Each month we'll tell you a little about a volunteer or member of our community.
Mary Lee Mantz
 Really? There is a Cape Cod Primary School in Nsangi, Uganda?
The arc of Mary Lee Mantz’s life is a story of courage, self-confidence and growth. Born in Waukesha in southeastern Wisconsin, the only child of a close knit family, her dearest memories are of childhood summer vacations with her parents and grandparents at a cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin.
Mary Lee's lifework is in nursing. She received an RN from Fairview Hospital School of Nursing in Minneapolis, a BS in Nursing from Marquette University in Milwaukee summa cum laude, and then trained in midwifery and received a masters degree from the Yale School of Nursing. She then spent the next twenty years in clinical practice and teaching in graduate school at Yale and at the University of Vermont, and in clinical practice in Connecticut.
Mary Lee’s life took some twists and turns during those years, but her most extraordinary decision was to quit her job in Vermont to move to Connecticut to help her recently widowed Yale friend raise her six children. Then, in the late ‘80s, Mary Lee moved to Cape Cod and worked in clinical practice in nurse midwifery in Hyannis.
In 1990, Mary Lee was ready for an adventure of another sort. Under a Rockefeller grant administered by Case Western Reserve University, she became a faculty member at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, arriving about three years after the end of the Ugandan civil war and at the start of the Gulf War. The country was decimated, the infrastructure was destroyed, and virtually all communications in East Africa was blocked by the Allies. The university was in ruins. Faculty had fled or been shoot. Books were burned. AIDS was rampant. Mary Lee’s mission: to help establish the first nursing degree program in East Africa.
Mary Lee arrived with one piece of equipment: an Underwood manual typewriter. She left five years later, mission accomplished. And she left with a gift from the Ugandans, a new name, Akiki, pronounced Akeek, meaning “the gentle one.”
What was her most memorable experience in Africa? Mary Lee thinks for a moment, then a smile appears on her face. “Cape Cod School….definitely,” she says.
While in Uganda, Mary Lee wrote to friends and family back home describing the deep need she saw, and their generous donations helped to build four primary schools, a small medical clinic, and wells for clean water in several villages. One school in the village of Nsangi received most of its funds from the Federated Church of Orleans and the Congregational Church of Chatham, and the villagers named their school the Cape Cod Primary School, although they had no idea where Cape Cod was. That school remains a vital part of the Ugandan school system today.
The sign in the photo above of the dedication at the opening of the school reads, “This school is dedicated with thanks to Congegational (Congregational) Church of Chatham and Tedbrated (Federated) Church of Orleans, Cape Cod, Mass, USA on 23 Ap 92.” That’s Mary Lee on the left.
 The second photo shows Mary Lee handing out school bags handmade by the women of the Federated Church.
In 1995, after leaving Uganda, Mary Lee joined John Snow, Inc., a public health management company that had contracted with the US Agency for International Development, and she was posted first to the Zimbabwe regional office, then to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zambia. During this time, she was involved in a variety of reproductive health projects related to AIDS, infant and maternal mortality, and family planning. Her work took her to villages away from the capitals in Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. And she may also have gone on about forty safaris, Mary Lee says with a smile.
Mary Lee left Africa in 2004, and as a senior advisor oversaw projects in eastern Europe, "commuting" to Russia and Romania, and living for six months in Albania. She then returned to her home on the cape and retired in July 2010.
What to do? Mary Lee had lived and worked overseas since 1990 and felt out of touch with her community. She was looking for interesting volunteer opportunities. How lucky were we when she read about Nauset Neighbors? At that time, Nauset Neighbors was a gleam in the collective eyes of the founders, and Mary Lee had spent much of her life putting programs together. Mary Lee quickly became an important part of the team that launched Nauset Neighbors in February 2011, and is on the Board of Directors in charge of outreach presentations.
Mary Lee’s new mission is to help the seniors of Cape Cod. Hers has been a rewarding and giving life.
- Esther Elkin
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