Teenagers And Senior Citizens Become Penpals With Westwood Writes

Westwood’s seniors will soon be writing to Westwood’s high school seniors (and juniors, sophomores, and freshmen). From October 2020 until May 2021, Westwood Writes participants will write to each other monthly.

“During a Zoom meeting, I discussed the problem of isolation that seniors in the community were experiencing during this pandemic. Danielle [Sutton Director of Westwood Youth & Family Services], suggested that perhaps one way to help with this is to connect High School students with seniors through a letter writing campaign … of course, I thought it was a wonderful idea and thus this initiative was created. We both believe in partnerships between students and seniors and this just seemed to be a great possibility,” explains Westwood Council on Aging director Lina Arena-DeRosa.

Both senior citizens and high school students have shown interest in Westwood Writes. “In addition to the Council On Aging newsletter, information about the program is also going out to the community through the most recent Westwood Wire and in the September Town Newsletter, so we are just started hearing from the first interested students this week. We will also be reaching out directly to high school students (as we do each September) to highlight our department services and programs, and we anticipate a lot of interest and excitement about this opportunity to connect with seniors and help out the community in a new way!” Explains Sutton. Arena-DeRosa adds that four senior citizens have already signed up since the newsletter went out on Tuesday.

“Isolation is a BIG problem during this pandemic. We feel really blessed that the COA Board has already started to make weekly friendly calls to homebound seniors and now we have this terrific opportunity to connect elders with students,” says Arena-DeRosa.

“We are so glad to be able to address the dual issues of isolation for our senior citizens and a lack of community service opportunities for our youth during the pandemic through this collaboration with the COA! We anticipate that while it came about to address pandemic-related issues, Westwood Writes will be a program that continues beyond the time of the pandemic because it is a simple and wonderful way to create meaningful connection between generations in a community,” says Sutton.

Interested in joining Westwood Writes? Senior citizens can email Arena-DeRosa at larenaderosa@townhall.westwood.ma.us or call 781-329-8799. High school students should email Westwood Youth & Family Services at youth@townhall.westwood.ma.us or call (781) 320-1006.