AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, time now for another story in our series on volunteerism - Here To Help. Elderly people living in nursing homes can experience increased feelings of isolation and loneliness. Listener Meridian Swift (ph) contacted us to tell us about Paul Falkowski, a volunteer who has dedicated himself to helping make seniors feel less isolated.
MERIDIAN SWIFT: He just impressed me with his ability to identify a need and then do whatever it is in his power and move forward along with it
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In 1986, Falkowski was in the Air Force, stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, when he stepped in as a fill-in choir director at a small Episcopal Church.
PAUL FALKOWSKI: One of the choir members said, hey, let's go down to the nursing home and sing some Christmas carols. And I came back from that experience really overwhelmed by what I saw and what I heard. And I said, folks, we need to do that more than once a year.
SUMMERS: But even after he left the choir, Falkowski kept going to nursing homes, performing music for the residents. Falkowski says that over the years, he visited around 170 nursing homes in and around Omaha.
FALKOWSKI: During that time, I was asking the staff, what do people really need? And almost unanimously, they would say one-on-one visits.
CHANG: That insight sparked a shift. Falkowski began prioritizing connecting with individuals over performing, and he started trying to get more people to visit nursing homes.
FALKOWSKI: And I got out into the community and started talking to anybody that would listen to me and say, hey, we need to go into these places and just sit and talk with people, just be with people.
SUMMERS: In 1994, Falkowski founded a nonprofit organization that became Community 360. The approach was simple - recruit volunteers to visit seniors and match them with nursing homes and assisted living facilities. No cookie cutter scripts, just personal connection, one on one.
FALKOWSKI: There was an artist, and when she moved into the nursing home, she was very depressed. And so the volunteer said, can you help me learn how to draw a horse? So all of a sudden now the nursing home is filled with paintings, you know, because this woman rediscovered her art.
CHANG: After nearly 40 years of organizing volunteers in Omaha, in 2019, Falkowski and his wife moved to Philadelphia to be closer to their grandchildren.
SUMMERS: Falkowski says he'd just given his first recruiting presentation in the Philadelphia area when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
CHANG: The sudden extreme social isolation experienced by nursing home residents across the country during lockdown was a painful reminder for Falkowski of how loneliness can have a negative impact on health.
FALKOWSKI: This why I say that volunteers are not nice to have. They're an essential. We need those connections. I'm sort of the evangelist. I'm out there preaching the gospel about volunteers and inspiring people to stop and think about what's going on. The boots on the ground, they know what a volunteer can do. It's convincing the policymakers that this is not just something nice to have, but it's something that's absolutely necessary to the quality of care.
SUMMERS: Paul Falkowski is president and founder of the National Association of Long-Term Care Volunteers.
CHANG: He continues to work to expand the volunteer network and to get more volunteers into more nursing homes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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