Seniors Helping Seniors

‘Seniors Helping Seniors’ is a new program that the Mountain View Day Worker Center just launched. The project was made possible by a partnership with the Mountain View Kiwanis Club.  

I spoke with María Marroquín, the Executive Director of the Center, today and she explained how the project started. She said that since “we know that there are senior citizens in the community who are living on only their social security and they need help with small projects” and some of her workers, the older ones, are sometimes passed over as employers stop by the Center to pick up the younger workers. The people who want to hire workers sometimes have the misconception that the younger workers are better. 

That’s not correct at all. The older ones are more experienced and are more committed to working, since they’ve been passed over so many times. Seniors Helping Seniors was created and it is a beautiful way to connect the two senior communities.

The program, sponsored by Mountain View Kiwanis, allows senior citizens (aged 65 and up) to hire a worker for 2 hours. The worker will be paid $20.00 and hour, but not by the resident. Their pay will be covered by the Kiwanis. 

The kinds of projects that could be completed in a 2 hour window might be light gardening, sometimes people just need someone to rake their yard. Other jobs might be a small painting job, housecleaning, doing laundry, cleaning the gutters, recycling, or carrying groceries.

 The Day Worker Center may not always have seniors available and encourages potential employers to reserve a worker from the Seniors Helping Seniors program at least one day in advance.

Here’s a link to the Day Worker Center. Or you can just stop by the office Monday to Saturday, 7:00 AM - 3:30 PM. The address is 113 Escuela Ave in Mountain View, just down the street from the Senior Center. Phone: 650-903-4102 Email: info@dayworkercentermv.org

I wanted to take a few photos of the workers, and while I was visiting, there were 8 students from Saint Francis High talking to the workers. The high school students come to have conversations in Español with the workers. It’s a safe place to practice your new second language and the workers are happy to help by listening. 

Please share this article with someone you might know who could use a few hours of help around the house.