Blog

Going Remote

Setbacks and challenges are difficult to overcome. We’ve all had them. Sometimes, however, it leads to unexpected opportunities and new ways of looking at things. That’s what’s happened at Community Partners in Caring. The pandemic has been a challenge, but it caused us to, among other things, establish new services, develop social media volunteer recruitment campaigns, develop partnerships with other non-profits and with for-profit organizations to serve seniors during COVID, implement new web-based platforms to onboard new volunteers, and it forced us into remote work for almost all of 2020 and half of 2021.

A month ago, almost 1/3 of our staff was still working remotely. We anticipate that number to grow. We’ve refined our method and the tools that facilitate remote work. We’ve established clear parameters and reporting tools for supervising remote staff. This move to more remote employees makes large offices an unnecessary expense and is enabling us to redirect funding toward services. More funding will go to serve seniors in the community and much less to overhead. That’s good news for Lompoc because it means the number of seniors we can serve will grow and the only limitation to that growth will be the number of Lompoc community members stepping forward to support Lompoc’s older frail community members. We will continue to be a presence in Lompoc and will continue our efforts to bring funding to Lompoc to support the growth of the Lompoc Volunteer Program. You may not see a building with our name on it, for now, but we have staff working remotely from Lompoc. We are here to serve and help facilitate free services for the older seniors that need support.  If you’d like to make a difference in the life of your older neighbor, call us. Seniors need rides to local health/wellness appointments, they need groceries delivered to their home, and they need a friendly caller reminding them they are not alone.  To learn more about our agency, call us at 805-925-8000 or visit our website at www.partnersincaring.org.  You can download the volunteer application right from our site. We’ve been onboarding volunteers remotely for two years now. After onboarding, staff meet with you, in Lompoc, to finalize the process and provide you with personal protection equipment, which we will continue to provide during the pandemic. We hope you join our agency as volunteers.  Together, we can help seniors age in place while, at the same time, helping them to maintain dignity, respect, and quality of life.

Warm Regards,

Vilma Contreras,
Executive Director of Community Partners in Caring