Suppose you were a senior citizen living in southern Chester County who finds basic housekeeping just beyond your health capacity these days. Even so, you are determined to stay in your own home. Where would you turn for help?

Many answer that question by turning to Helping Hands, a home visitation service and outreach program that provides biweekly housekeeping services to seniors in fourteen different communities within Chester County. Helping Hands provides affordable cleaning services to income qualified citizens over the age of fifty. Receiving weekly help with chores, many of which involve significant physical labor, these individuals are able to live independently, cost-effectively, and with fewer domestic accidents. In addition, a regular Helping Hands visitor often becomes an important social contact. As one client put it, “Physically, it [Helping Hands] is a godsend and has allowed me to remain living independently longer than I anticipated.”

Like so many other direct service efforts, Helping Hands ran into challenges in 2009. Despite faithful support from a number of contributors at Kendal Crosslands Communities, the program couldn’t keep up with the requests for services, and has had to disappoint new seniors inquiring about help.

So the leaders at Kendal Crosslands Communities decided to encourage a new source of support. Phil deBaun and Rich Lysle, Executive Directors at Kendal Crosslands and Kendal at Longwood, challenged staff members to support Helping Hands during the year-end giving emphasis. To lead the request, both deBaun and Lysle agreed to match the first $1,000 in staff giving. The goal for total staff support was $4,000.

So what happens when staff members urge each other to make a difference in supporting outreach to 45 low income seniors through the helping hands of two staff members providing support on a regular basis? The results were extremely gratifying. Not only did more than 30 staff participate, but giving came within $83 of the goal by December 31, and staff members initiated a request for payroll deduction for charitable giving—which will surely put the total over the $4,000 goal that was set!

In this effort, staff joined residents in a powerful show of support for Helping Hands, an outreach that distinguishes Kendal-Crosslands Communities as a place where caring extends beyond the campus to the broader community.