By LILLIAN GLAROS

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock photo
Like many of her neighbors at Spellman House Apartments in Lakeland, 73-year-old Carolyn Sims has a shelf outside of her unit filled with flowers and trinkets. She keeps a couple of walkers indoors to help her get around, and her pill bottles sit on the side table next to her armchair.
Health issues make it difficult for Sims to get around. That’s where a College Park-based organization, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, steps in, sending volunteers to drive her to doctor appointments, the grocery store and neighborhood events.
“Oh, I’m thankful, real thankful,” Sims said. “It’s awesome.”
Sims, who signed up for the free service in 2020, enlists the help of volunteers two or three times a month. She also likes making friends with the volunteers who assist her, like Mary Anne Hakes.
Hakes, a Calvert Hills resident and co-chair of College Park’s Senior Advisory Committee, has been volunteering for Neighbors Helping Neighbors since the organization started in 2018 to assist College Park residents who are disabled or older than 55 with errands, household chores and yard work, like raking leaves.
“The idea is to allow people to age in place, so that if they have reached a point where, because of illness or age or something, they can’t drive, we don’t want them to have to leave the community if that’s not their wish,” Hakes said. “So if we can do things to help them, like grocery shop and things like that, we’d like people to remain in their homes as long as they want to.”
Some of the most common tasks for Neighbors Helping Neighbors volunteers are lawn maintenance and rides to medical appointments and grocery stores, according to Paula Greene, who coordinates the nonprofit’s volunteers. The organization also helps fill a social void, as Greene calls the clients once a week to check up on them.
“Sometimes I’m on the phone an hour just listening to them talk,” Greene said.
She said she never rejects a request unless no volunteer is available.
“If someone will call and say, ‘I need to get my car washed,’ well, I would tell them I’m going to put it out there, but I’m not sure if a volunteer will pick it up or not,” Greene, a Riverdale resident, said, “so I let them know, but I always take their requests.”
Summer is the busiest season for the service, which helped 11 clients in June and 58 so far this year.
One of the organization’s main challenges is finding volunteers, Greene said. Neighbors Helping Neighbors currently has 16 volunteers.
“We still struggle with having … the right volunteers to meet the needs of the members,” Robert Thurston, the chair of Neighbors Helping Neighbors’ board of directors, said.
Volunteer Donald Scheckel, a new member of the board, said he enjoys all the tasks he does, from chatting with clients while driving them to appointments to raking leaves in their yards.
“Some people, they’re looking for opportunities to help others, and some people need support from others,” Scheckel, a Beltsville resident, said. “So if we can get people together to do that, then it’s going to be best for everybody.”
The city pays for operating costs and Greene’s compensation, and the Rockville-based Jewish Council for the Aging (JCA) provides operational support for volunteer training and ride scheduling software, Thurston, who lives in College Park’s Lakeland community, said. Neighbors Helping Neighbors participates in the JCA’s VillageRides program, which partners with communities to offer transportation to seniors and those with disabilities.
“At some point, if we’re lucky, we all will get old – and [we’ll] need some assistance to help us manage our day-to-day lives,” Thurston said. “I’m hoping that we will develop an army of people that see that need … to help their neighbors stay in their homes as long as they can.”