If you’re looking to volunteer in Hamilton County, you don’t need to look any further than the Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County.

From individual volunteers to group projects, we have programs to enable you to give back to the senior population that fit your time frame and level of availability.

Individual Opportunities to Volunteer in Hamilton County

Transportation for Seniors

For many seniors living at home, it can be a challenge getting to doctor appointments when driving is no longer an option for the individual. Getting safely to the doctors’ office and back is one of the best ways that an individual can help a member of the senior community.

Transportation volunteers go to the senior’s home, pick them up, and transport them to the office. As the volunteer, you can either wait for them in the waiting room or leave and come back and get them after the appointment is over.

Transportation is also needed from time to time helping a senior get to the grocery store. Some seniors want to get out and go to the store themselves, while others would love to have someone head out and do their shopping for them.

Some seniors love to be dropped off at the grocery store and then picked up 90 minutes later, giving them opportunity to be out of the house for a portion of the day.

House Cleaning for Seniors

House cleaning is another way to volunteer in Hamilton County and meet the need of seniors in our community. As the mobility of a senior is reduced, light house cleaning is one of the biggest needs they have.

Our seniors could use help dusting, vacuuming, mopping and cleaning the bathrooms. The average time for a volunteer visit is an hour and a half.

Visitation for Seniors

Our visitation program supplies a friendly visitor to seniors in their home. The volunteer time is completely up to the volunteer as to how much time they want to give.

We ask that volunteers give no more than 2 hours at a time, and a long lasting relationship is a goal whenever possible. Giving a bit of your time to relieve a 24 hour caregiver is extremely helpful in many households. Your volunteer time allows the caregiver to go out and get some errands done and have a few minutes to themselves. There isn’t a set schedule for friendly visitors, but seniors love a visit whenever you can afford the time.

Phone pals for seniors

A perfect way to volunteer in Hamilton County for people who don’t want to travel! Our phone pal program consists of calling to check in on a senior about twice a week.

Our team works to match up volunteers with seniors who want the same level of contact. The goal is to prevent isolation and increase social interaction.

Seniors can go weeks without seeing anyone, and this helps increase their socialization while allowing you to volunteer from your home.

Paying bills with Seniors

Many seniors find themselves on a fixed income, and many would love to have someone help them get setup on an automatic bill pay.

Some seniors may be blind or have vision difficulties, and would love to have a volunteer help to fill out and mail their bills for them.

Budgeting with Seniors

Some seniors find themselves trying to get out of credit card debt. We have quite a few seniors that could use some assistance getting out of debt.

Other seniors would love help budgeting so they can find more freedom with their fixed income. Our volunteers help people pay bills, identify areas they could save money, and set goals for spending each month.

Group volunteering in Hamilton County

While there are many opportunities for volunteering as an individual, we have many group projects for your consideration. Our goal here at Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County is to enable our seniors to remain in their homes as long as possible. For many seniors, regular household upkeep is a task that goes undone and a group can make short work of a myriad of tasks in a short time.

Interior Painting

Many of our seniors have painting projects that could be accomplished by a team of people quite easily. A time would be scheduled for your team to visit the home of one of our seniors and accomplish their painting project.

Jobs could consist of painting a room inside their house, moving the furniture to accomplish the job and setting the room back up when finished. There are all sizes of painting projects available depending on the size and availability of your team.

Yard Work

Seniors will contact the Shepherd’s Center with yard work that need to be done, and we love sending teams to help brighten their day. Raking leaves and bagging them up for collection is available seasonally.

Other seasonal yard work like planting flowers, mulching and pulling weeds are perfect jobs for a service project for your church or business group.

Exterior painting

For seniors in older homes, exterior painting is a need that could easily be accomplished by a service group. Some houses have wood siding that needs painted every few years, and a team could easily take a section of the home and freshen up the paint to protect the home from the elements.

Deck Staining

For seniors who have a wooden deck attached to their home, getting down on their hands and knees to stain a deck is often out of the question. Enabling our seniors to keep their deck weatherproof is a need that could easily be met by a small group of volunteers in an afternoon.

Senior Assistance Installation

As our seniors age, they often need assistance putting up handles and grab bars in their homes that increase their mobility. If you’re a handyman and would like to help our seniors, we have small projects across the city that you could step in for a short time and make a huge difference.

General Home Repairs

We receive calls from our seniors about general home repairs almost on a daily basis. Closet doors that are off track or washing windows are common requests. If it’s a repair that you would ever need to do on your home, our seniors have those needs as well.

Together Today Volunteers

The Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County offers a program called Together Today that enables seniors to have socialization outside of their homes. With programs meeting in Westfield, Sheridan, Fishers and Noblesville, there is always a need for volunteers to be a part.

Our lead volunteers help to set up the room and have breakfast on the table for our seniors as they gather together. Volunteers greet seniors at the door as they come in and help lead them in games during their time at the event.

There are a minimum of 2 volunteers per event, and the usual time commitment is from 8:30am to 1:30pm. Groups range in size from 15-30 and breakfast and lunch are served at each event.

Volunteer Requirements:

We do complete background checks on all volunteers, and references are checked for any volunteer who is going to be with a senior 1 on 1. Protection for our seniors is priority number one, so before any volunteer activity would be scheduled, a background check would need to be completed.

We couldn’t achieve our mission of allowing seniors to stay in their homes as long as possible without our volunteer help. Allowing our seniors to age in place rather than moving to a care facility is very important to them as long as they are able.

These simple tasks by individuals and teams of volunteers allow our seniors to live their lives in the homes that they feel comfortable in and have loved for years.

If you would like to be a part of volunteering with the Shepherd’s Center of Hamilton County, please contact our office at (317) 674-8777 or by emailing Lauren.