Health A al ux it il p ia r a y C Volunteer Services Newsletter WINTER 2020 Capital Health Auxiliary 125 YEARS 2020 of service to the community for your service Inside this Issue { 2 - 3 } A Message from Our Outgoing { 10 } Capital Thrift Store Auxiliary President { 10 } Auxiliary Farmers Market { 3 } A Message from Our Incoming { 11 } Auxiliary Toy Closet Auxiliary President { 12 - 13 } Summer Junior Program 2020 { 4 - 5 } A Message from Our Manager of Volunteer Services { 14 } Tree of Lights Name Listing { 6 } Healing Arts at Capital Health { 15 } Flowers to Empower { 6 } 30 Years of Volunteering and Counting { 16 } Recipes by Our Volunteers { 7 } Auxiliary Celebrates 125 Years of Service { 17 } Volunteer Opportunities { 8 } Monarch Memorial Garden { 18 } Ensure Your Safety { 8 } Auxiliary Cookie Program { 19 } Oasis Spa Coupon { 9 } Donations by Our Adult Volunteers A MESSAGE FROM Donna Costanzo, Outgoing Auxiliary President Use your voice for kindness, your ears for compassion, your hands for charity, your mind for truth, and your heart for love. As I reflect on my 10 years as an Auxiliary volunteer, and the past four years serving as your President, I am reminded of the incredible work the Auxiliary does. I have had the opportunity to witness the many ways our volunteers make a positive impact on our patients’ hospital experience. Oftentimes, it’s through the smallest of actions, such as sharing a warm smile, extending a compassionate touch, or being an active and empathetic listener that brings our patients the most comfort. This year, we celebrate our Auxiliary volunteers for the contributions that they have made over the past 125 years. The Auxiliary has a long history of supporting the educational and health programs of our hospital through fundraising efforts and service projects. During my four-year tenure as Auxiliary President, I have had the privilege to work closely with a team of bright, dedicated and compassionate volunteers. Through their work, the Auxiliary has made great strides in returning to the mission of our predecessors by not only fundraising for hospital programming but also becoming an integral part of providing patient services. I am thankful to our program coordinators for their energy, hard work and innovative thinking in helping us establish and successfully run our nine service programs. Three of our programs—Clothes4Change, Family Health Center’s Farmers Markets, and Toy Closet—have made great improvements in the lives of our most underserved patients. These programs provide our clinic families with gently used clothing, fresh fruit, vegetables, and eggs as well as books and toys for our pediatric patients. The Auxiliary Cookie Program, Mobile Library, Tales for Tiny Tots, Toy Closet, Mental Health Service, and Kitty’s Closet programs help improve the experience of those who visit our Emergency Room or are admitted or receiving outpatient services at both hospitals. These programs provide cookies for our cancer patients; books and toys for our clinic patients, inpatients and newborns; resource books and sensory cart items for our mental health staff and patients; and backpacks filled with new clothing, hygiene supplies and nightlights for children entering foster care. Our efforts have also expanded to include partnerships with our community neighbors. The Auxiliary has teamed up with students from our Hopewell Valley Central High School to form the CHATS Club. Student club members serve as Junior Board members who work as sponsors to support our fundraisers and service projects. Our Tree of Lights fundraising committee has partnered with Hopewell Valley Central High School’s Music & Theater Association and Chambers Choir to offer a choral program during our annual Tree of Lights Ceremony. This committee has also partnered with the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space (FoHVOS) in creating our living memorial Monarch Garden located in the CHAI Garden at the Hopewell Campus. I am grateful to my fundraising chairs who oversee our thrift store, designer bag bingo nights, fashion shows, pecan and raffle sales, and Tree of Lights campaign. These volunteers work tirelessly to raise funds for our service projects and hospital department grants. Our work would be impossible without their dedication and support. { 2 } WINTER 2020 As my term comes to an end, I would like to thank the Auxiliary Board, hospital volunteers, and administrators for their support. Over the past four years, I have seen how teamwork and nurturing the talents and ideas of our volunteers can lead to great things. I am confident that the Auxiliary will continue to do wonderful things under our new leadership. Please join me in welcoming Stacy Denton, who began her tenure as Auxiliary President in September 2020. As she continues in her new role, I hope you will embrace her as you have me. Stacy is a bright, kind, and caring young woman. With her talents, I have no doubt she will be successful in bringing new ideas to the table that will help improve our patients’ experience and will inspire our members to develop new programs to help meet our patients’ needs. My role as the Auxiliary President has been a rewarding experience. I am grateful to all of you for your friendship and support over the past four years. Moving ahead, I look forward to continuing my work with the Auxiliary in caring for our patients and community. Sincerely, Donna Costanzo Outgoing Auxiliary President A MESSAGE FROM Stacy Denton, Incoming Auxiliary President It is indeed an honor and pleasure to greet you as the new president of the Auxiliary. I am very excited to be leading such an important professional organization with a rich history spanning over 125 years. I look forward to collaborating with you to leverage new opportunities to increase membership, to develop and support initiatives that inspire our members, and to serve with integrity, hope, compassion and love for all. Following the footsteps of the past president, I have great appreciation for her hard work and dedication to the Auxiliary. She has done a tremendous job in providing excellent leadership and a robust list of service projects. As we embark on a new year of opportunities and some challenges, I am confident that we can achieve the highest level of service and support to Capital Health’s patients and community. Let us continue to work collaboratively to further the goals and objective of the Auxiliary. Thank you for allowing me to serve as your president. Sincerely, Stacy Denton Incoming Auxiliary President 609.570.3132 n [email protected] capitalhealth.org/auxiliary WINTER 2020 { 3 } A LETTER FROM Dipti Padliya, Manager, Volunteer Services Dear All, The year 2020 has been a unique one...let’s just leave it at that. Throughout it all, we have been faced with many trials and tribulations . Everyone has been affected by the coronavirus in some way or another, and it has impacted our world in more ways than one. By the end of the first quarter of 2020, we were in a full-blown pandemic and our hospital administration diligently implemented CDC guidelines. Before long, and out of an abundance of caution for our patients, staff and volunteers, they had to implement visitor and volunteer restrictions at the hospitals. I still remember the day I had to send the memo out to all my volunteers explaining the restrictions, and it broke my heart! I was humbled by the overwhelming response from our volunteers, who continued to call and check in with us and let us know that they were doing fine. Soon, my sadness of missing them was turned into relief, knowing that they were safe at home! As we proceeded to cancel all our scheduled events for the year—such as annual luncheons and summer junior programs—and then close the thrift store, we were constantly looking for ideas for how we could safely resume our volunteer efforts. This led to the concept of Virtual and Curbside Volunteering! We soon informed all our 2020 juniors about the new volunteering program and how they could help and were pleasantly surprised by how many of them were interested in volunteering. An online and at-home Summer Junior Volunteer program also allowed many juniors to create and donate many wonderful items to benefit our patients and staff in the hospitals, such as handmade face shields and face masks, art, healthy recipes, books and magazines, and many other items which have truly helped our inpatients have a more comfortable hospital stay. As the summer ended, we extended the program to our adult volunteers, who have been equally supportive. Their overwhelming response has helped us to continue many of our programs and ad hoc tasks like labelling, assembling discharge packets and mailers, and many others. I would like to send a big “thank you” to you all—you have enabled us to support our patients in ways far beyond expectations! Capital Health’s thrift store reopened in October and our volunteers there have been busy as bees ever since! Thank you again all Capital Thrift volunteers, with special thanks to Leslie Gibbons for her amazing commitment to running the store. { 4 } WINTER 2020 This year has also given us some wonderful reasons to celebrate – • 125 years of the Auxiliary – we are thankful for their contributions to Capital Health and our community! • Super volunteer Rita Kravitz marks 30 years of volunteering with Capital Health. Thank you, Rita! • Our new Auxiliary President, Stacy Denton - I wish her the best and look forward to working with her on new and wonderful Auxiliary projects as we continue to grow as an organization. • Our outgoing Auxiliary President, Donna Costanzo - I would like to congratulate Donna on her outstanding and exemplary work these past four years and thank her for always being a friend first and then a colleague.