Kid Caregivers, Part 4

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider, hurt, on the answers for elders radio show. And Welcome back everyone to answers for elders. And we are here with wonderful Hayley Richmond, who is fourteen years old, almost fifteen and on the ten of May. Happy Birthday coming up. And Haley is they founder and executive director of not one but two nonprofits based in Long Island, New York, kid caregivers and puzzles to remember. And again we’ve been talking this hour about how she’s inspired so many youth and and communities and seniors and the difference it’s like. You know, first of all, when you look at yourself in the mirror every day, how does it feel to know you’re making such a big difference in the world? It makes me feel happy because I’m happy that get to inspire other kids to volunteer. You know, I went just personal story for me. I went mem majority of my career and I sold media, loved it, but I never felt like I was making a difference. And when I found an answers for elders in two thousand and nine, all of that stuff went away. There’s no way I could go back and go do something that didn’t make a difference like what I feel like I’m doing now. It’s to have that fulfillment in your life and certainly this is giving our young people, like you, an opportunity to feel what that’s like, that you’re making a difference each and every day. And you know, it’s just getting started and I think one of the things that I’m really excited about is potentially working with you to help inspire our youth and to move forward in, you know, in a positive direction. So, Hayley, tell me a little bit about just generally. Obviously we want to get people involved. There’s many ways in which people can contribute, isn’t there? Yes, they can contribute by doing a puzzle, dry going to a facility or even just distributing puzzles. There’s so many different ways. MMM. So if someone is going to reach out and let’s say I I have a grand daughter that’s that I would like to introduce to you, how would that what would that process look like? So we can make an email us and we can give them a facility reach out to if they have a grampair of all times as these, we will send them puzzles. HMM, the the facility or directly to them? Uh, Huh, okay. And then what about like, for example, let’s say I have a grandmother, grandparent with Alzheimer’s disease. If you’re going to send puzzles, are you going to do any sort of training? Tell me a little bit about how you work with them at that point. So we have lessons and we have videos and we can, I zoom of them if they’re not local to me. MMM, and I give them a sheet of my own personal experiences and we can help them discover that sometimes, you know, they discover along the way when dealing with some of all curs duties. Yeah, I had a volunteer one time. Her Grandmother was at a facility and she had all our reces and she went there of some of her friends and they learned along the way to like just take breaks of the people need it and to really just get them involved. MMM, MMM. Well, and it’s true because when when you just start, you know, getting together with people and start, you know, making a difference, I think it’s huge. It’s so huge and certainly I am excited to explore a little bit more about how we can help so let’s say, for example, you don’t have someone that’s a young person. You just want to help as an adult. You can donate puzzles. What else can you? Can you give a financial donation? Yes, so we accept donations and puzzles and financial donations, anything will help. And we give tax donation letters to people who have done that. That’s amazing. And then, obviously, to do that, you had to learn about all this stuff with a nonprofit, haven’t you? Yeah, so at first it was a little hard, but my mom helped me along in the way and we were able to really understand how making a nonprofit would help so much more. MMM. Well, it does, and and certainly you’re doing amazing things with it. So it is far right. Now, how many volunteers do you have working for you? We have almost a thousand volunteers working for us. You’re amazing, you’re absolutely amazing. And they’re they’re all throughout the US. Yes, and we have them worldwide. I used to live in long on city, so I had a lot of friends who were from the United Nations and they would travel or we have ambassadors from Japan, Brazil, Portugal, Jamaica. We have a lot of different people from a lot of different places and we’re in over nine countries. Amazing, amazing. And and when you do what you do, you know how, I guess, to get involved. How long does it take? I’m want to say, if I reach out, how faster they matched with a facility that really do you have to find a new relationship with one? Do you help them secure it? What happens in that process? So it depends. So if we have like a puzzle time going around near them and ambassador, we can connect them to their or if they want to start a new chapter, let’s say in Australia or somewhere, we can connect them of the facility and like have them talk to each other and they can become of the ambassador or a volunteer. MMM and obviously, you know, just for each and every one of you, if you have a church group, a school group, if you’re an educator and work with kids, anything like that, I’m sure that you want to hear from them. Is that correct? Yes, we would love that. And to our listeners, two years of quarantine literally for many of our seniors has been overwhelming. You know, this is the time for us all to step up and say, you know what, we’re all a community here. Time for us to show some love to those that loved us through the years and I know that for you know, an adult, it’s a lot easier, but our children need to find purpose to and I think this is something that is so critical in in, you know, building a character. You know, it’s so interesting. When I was growing up Hayley, I had an aunt that I always admired. I loved my aunt Marty to death, but one of the reasons why I loved her so much is she was always working on my character. You know, where my parents do the right thing, but it was really more about she would get more introspective with me and she would say, look for the diamonds. I’ll tell you a little story. Look for the diamonds. To her was fine ways that you’re that roughness in you can be polished right. So there’s things like I’ll never forget. I cannot pass a grocery cart in the in a parking lot that’s like loose without taking it to its holding place. If it’s because that was ingrained in me by her, because it gave me purpose. I knew that it was building my character to be a better person. If I saw somebody that needed help, you know in I mean a grocery store, somebody who need to reach something off of a shell or something like that. I it’s just ingrained in me and I think a lot of us, you know, adults, forget that piece. They’ve forgotten about the sense of purpose, certainly for you. Your parents, you know, raised you right to have that sense of purpose, for you to think about those things. But I think it’s never too late to learn those things, and I think so, so certainly for you. You know, how has it been to have that kind of perspective? Do you find other kids kind of gravitating towards you, like I want to have sense of purpose to I mean, is that what you’re finding? Yeah, I think a lot of my friends have had get involved say like they think this is wonderful and they love doing this because it gives them, you know, a sense of, like you said, purpose and accomplish that and makes them feel good that they’re helping someone’s life, they’re really changing someone’s life. Yeah, and it does so much for self esteem, because I know that. You know, self esteem is built internally. It’s about built through the things that you do for yourself, not what other people think of you, and the more and more you build yourself up through accomplishments and things like that, the higher your own personal self esteem becomes, and I think that’s one of the things that’s so exceptional about what you do and I have no doubt you’re going to go a long way in this world. And you know, we’re about ready to cause we got about three minutes. So where do you see yourself in five years? I want to get into more countries, I want to create a book to talk about my own personal experiences and I want to just try to reach out to more marginalized facilities that don’t have a lot of resources. Yes, and you’re going to go to obviously to college some day. Yeah, like like three four years, and then, do you know what you want to be yet? Uh, I really want to be like an aurologist or something to do with medicine. HMM, good for you, you and I have no doubt you will make it. It’s a very, very complex path, but certainly something that is worth exploring and needed very badly. So we want each and every one of our listeners to pay attention and hopefully reach out to kid caregiverscom or puzzles to remember dotorg. Did I get those right? Yes, and let’s see what we can do to help haling on her mission. So, Hayley, tell us a little bit about if you had a wish list, how can we help you today? We want to get more students and more people to volunteer and health. Okay, and certainly we’re on board. And for each and every one of you. And answers for elders. You know, US entered elders. Were so thrilled that you’re with us today and also Haley. You know, keep up the good work. We want to support you and everything that you do and just how we can help you in the future is so important. So thank you for what you do. Thank you all right, everyone, and to each and every one of you. We are so glad that Haley’s with us. We’re looking forward to let’s make a big splash in the northwest and around the world and I am totally on board to help you in any way possible, Haley, and I know you have a short stop here that you’ve got to get going, so I’m going to let you go into each and every one of you. We are really glad that you’re here be good to each other and also embrace our kids, embrace our youth. Know that they are want to be a part and they can be a part of the process of healing. A lot in families take care of you. One answers for elders radio show with Suzanne Newman hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. Check out more podcast like this to help you find qualified senior care, x forts and areas of financial, legal, health and wellness and living options. Learn about our radio show, receive promotional discounts and meet our experts by clicking on the banner to join the Senior Advocate Network at answers for elders RADIOCOM. Now there is one place to find the answers for elders.