The visiting program is the backbone of the entire organization: we match a lonely elderly person with
a volunteer who visits him or her regularly. These visits provide friendly and friendly relationships
and a link to the outside world for elderly people without friends or family, keeping with our philosophy
"flowers before bread"
. Often, this lays the groundwork for solid and long-lasting friendships characterized by love and trust.
The volunteer often becomes that special friend that has been missing in the elderly person's life.
When, in 1950, Armand first began bringing elderly Parisians to his family Chateau of Montguichet in
the countryside north of Paris for vacations, such a concept was not only new, it was indeed revolutionary.
Most of these octogenarians had worked hard for many years without ever taking any time off. Jet-age
holiday travel and long ski weekends were not yet commonplace like they are today.
Today the petits frères des Pauvres continue to stress the importance of their vacation houses
for their old friends. Here, for a period of a few days or several weeks, groups of elderly persons
and young volunteers can live together, sharing, renewing their forces after a long winter, preparing
for another one to come. In recent years, we have paid special attention to the need for a vacation
for those whose handicaps make it impossible to participate in the many vacations packages now available
to senior citizens.
Summer vacations are important to everyone. Especially when, because of your age, the hard winter keeps
you at home for months, more isolated than ever. A vacation with les petits frères des Pauvres
means a chance to spend time in the company of others, with outings during the day and music at night,
making friends and sharing meals and laughter after months of eating alone.
For more than a decade, accepting the challenge to find innovative and imaginative solutions to problems
more easily ignored, les petits frères in France have organized a week-long Rhine River cruise
for seventy extremely old and often severely handicapped nursing home patients. Most came in wheelchairs;
others could only walk short distances with assistance. The cruise format was selected because a lack
of physical mobility is less important when one can literally sit and watch the world go by. Each evening
the ship docks in a different port where local authorities have arranged shipboard or on-shore entertainment,
with folk singing and dancing while sipping Rhine Valley wines. The long-term improvement registered
in participants on these cruises astounded even the attending medical staff. The chance to be like everyone
else, sometimes after years of staring at the same ceiling and the same four walls, worked psychological,
and even physical, miracles. It can be done. We need only the will to try.
Christmas and Easter holiday parties
