Provided/Ashley Berenato of Hammonton, vice president of the Stockton University Gerontology Club, with some of the cards members have made.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP – Stockton University’s Gerontology Club is working to connect with home-bound elderly area residents through homemade cards.
The project began when the daughter of a resident at Seashore Gardens Living Center in Galloway posted on Facebook asking people to send her father birthday wishes.
Ashley Berenato of Hammonton, a senior health sciences major at Stockton and vice president of the Gerontology Club, contacted the club’s board members and advisor Christine Gayda and suggested they make cards for the resident.
Gayda, an assistant professor of psychology at Stockton, loved the idea and suggested they also make “thinking-of-you” cards for all residents at Seashore Gardens.
“I knew we were going to have a crisis with our older adults who can’t get out. Our students who have a passion for gerontology knew to do this,” said Gayda, who is also coordinator of the Gerontology minor and service chair for the Stockton Center on Successful Aging.
With no visitors allowed at nursing homes and assisted living facilities during the coronavirus pandemic, Gayda, who teaches a gerontology class, said she knows residents are facing isolation and depression.
More than 50 cards are already on their way to Seashore Gardens, but the number doesn’t have to stop there. Gayda said they also want to reach out to residents at other facilities.
Anyone interested in sending or receiving cards or helping to reach out to older adults can contact Gayda at Christine.Gayda@Stockton.edu.
