Sponsor A Senior – a not-for-profit organization created to financially assist Seniors going into or currently living in Assisted Living Communities. (Currently striving for Registered Charity status to provide official tax receipts for our Sponsors!)
Sponsoring someone you know or have never met to assist in giving them the best quality of life. Due to the high cost of these services, and lack of government subsidies, we want to help people afford such places.
Seniors have been the backbone of our society, contributing to many things that have given us a better quality of life – fought for our rights & freedom, built our country infrastructure, and created our community spirit to name a few.
We created this in return for their hard work, sweat and tears to give back and give them a sense of community.
Help us help them – Sponsor a Senior today!
How Sponsor A Senior came to life…
Sponsor A Senior was a result of looking into Assisted Living Communities for my parents – then it came to me in a dream (on April 3, 2023) and then the dream became reality (on May 8, 2023)…
Let’s back it up a bit first to give you the full picture…
My parent’s health started to decline and we began having discussions regarding what options were available in our area.
It was decided that I would be in charge of organizing and collecting the information.
I researched, made a questionnaire, and started to gather all the information I could find online.
In the beginning, I was actually impressed at the amount of information, contact numbers, websites, and available resources for Seniors in our area that I was finding.
Until I started the process of contacting people…
As I was delving into it, the only information that was available was for the city of Winnipeg – nothing for the city of Brandon.
This journey became quite frustrating very quickly.
I thought to myself – if I am struggling with this and I have been an Administrator most of my life and this comes fairly easy to me, how must other people feel – Seniors needing this information, family members or friends trying to help their loved ones – struggling through this makes the journey much more difficult than it needs to be.
As I dug deeper, I started to find out more information but it was a fight every step of the way.
Some people were helpful and others were absolutely clueless. Talking with friends and family members and their experiences, I started to gain more knowledge and contact information and heard a lot of interesting stories of people they knew.
Once I had all the information I could find, my parents and I had a meeting to discuss and review everything.
We could get them some help now in their own place, if they wanted. Some was free or covered under Manitoba Health and other services would be at a cost.
This would get them by for a while, but we all knew they would need to look further into Assisted Living options.
Obviously, they wanted to stay in the city – where they had friends and family.
They could go a little further to the rural communities within 45 minutes of the city at almost half the cost or even less believe it or not but there was a catch – my Mom had a mini-stroke a few years ago and had she been even 20 minutes longer at getting to the hospital, it would have been the difference between a minor stroke and a major stroke – so that was in the backs of our minds as we were having these discussions. Our conclusion – they needed to stay within the city.
Finding out the costs involved and related to Assisted Living Communities was an eye opening experience.
These accommodations are necessary for many couples and individuals but there isn’t a lot of government funding or subsidizing to help with the costs involved.
In our area, these accommodations range from $4,500 - $7,000 per month for a couple and to be honest it is not much cheaper for an individual.
Having the option of these services and accommodations is absolutely wonderful and needed – they definitely provide a quality of life that you cannot have living on your own – the meals, transportation options, activities, sociability, housekeeping, nurses or health care aids, safety and oversight that they provide are a peace of mind for the clients along with their families.
After we looked into everything that we could, we started the discussion phase.
During the discussion phase, it came out how tough this process is mentally and emotionally without all the added frustrations – lack of information, financial strain, moving again, downsizing, feeling of losing independence but recognizing it is not losing independence as much as gaining a better quality of life.
I wondered what I could do for my parents, and also for others going through this journey, so I decided to write letters to provincial government officials, petitioning for these services to be subsidized or at least have more options from government assistance.
But there had to be something more that could be done…
After sleeping on it a few nights and wondering if there was anything else we could look into or do, it came to me in a dream. Starting a nonprofit organization to assist seniors financially along with resources and information – be the go-to place for individuals seeking information for seniors.
The next morning, I started looking into not-for-profit organizations and Charities and everything that entailed.
And here we are…Sponsor A Senior came to life.
We chose the name as we have been involved in the racing community and were always looking for sponsors and sponsorship and it just resonated with us that this is what we wanted the name to be!
We are currently a not-for-profit organization aspiring to attain Registered Charity status to be able to provide our sponsors with Official Tax receipts.
This way our sponsors and people that are currently assisting their family members monetarily could go through Sponsor A Senior and benefit from their sponsorship!
If you want to become a Sponsor – please register as a Sponsor.
If you want to become a client – please fill out the application form.
If you have questions, please contact us at 204-573-8995 or info@sponsorasenior.ca.
Thank you for supporting our cause to help those who have given us so much…
I hope this resonates with you - no matter what your age or circumstance. Thank you for taking a moment of your time to read our story...
We all need each other at some point and time in life…
This is the personal story and opinion of our President – Michele Fraser
