As Kathi was pregnant, we were looking for opportunities to volunteer with flexibility to work as many or as little hours we felt comfortable each week. We did a bit of research online at www.freiwilligenzentren-tirol.at and contacted a few volunteering organisations. We also visited one bigger organisation with diverse fields of work after finding information at http://www.isd.or.at/. We registered with them as volunteers and the coordinator got us in touch with one place (an organisation) to talk to. After a bit of coordination and introductory meetings, we started volunteering at two places.
First was at an elderly home called, Notburga Heim. We visited the center to volunteer with two hours of our time each week to play games with the elderly. We were playing a few card and board games like Chess, Watten, and Rummikub. It was amazing to see the elderly, some in the 90s be so active with their minds when they were playing games. Being here also made us realise the transient nature of life when we sometimes heard the news about some elderly person passing away who was around a few weeks back. We might have given a bit of our time for them, and like any other volunteering opportunity, we learnt a lot about life and attitude from those elderly people.
The second place we volunteered was called, Wohnheim Saggen. It was a large and very old elderly home with about 120 residents. There were so many opportunities to volunteer depending on how much time we had to give for them. After discussing various possibilities, we decided to start with doing Chair Yoga classes for the elderly. Each week on Thursday they had a voluntary movement class and we included chair yoga into it. We sat with all the elderly people on chairs in a large circle and went through a round of yoga. It was fascinating to see how strong some of them were with the movement of their hands and legs even though many of them had age related limitations. So it was fun for us to teach, as well as participate in those classes. This was also a place where we were humbled to have our pre-conceptions about elderly people change, by seeing their motivation to move and try out new things even in their 90s.
Every time we went to volunteer, we came back home with a sense of calm and peace in our hearts. We strongly believe that volunteering is a wonderful source of peace and calm for the soul.
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| Image Source: AARP.com |
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