We hope you and your family had a safe, healthy, and Happy Thanksgiving! We would like to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU for your support and hard work to help our neighbors in need! We are more grateful than ever for your support of our work to ensure that everyone in our community has a safe and healthy place to call home.
MnREIA is hosting a Casino Night Holiday Party on Tuesday, December 6, 2022.
Try your hand at Black Jack, Texas Hold’em, and Three Way Action Poker and help raise money to support our work!
Check out their newsletter HERE, and register today at www.mnreia.com/
We would like to send a very special thank you to Ryan Thomas, our Ramp Program Manager! Ryan’s last day was this month because he is moving to Hawaii. We are going to miss his hard work, dedication and willingness to help homeowners in need.
During the year and a half that he worked for us, Ryan planned, managed and supervised more than 40 ramp builds. These projects had a direct, positive impact on the lives of the people he helped, as they can now safely and more independently come and go from their homes.
Perhaps the best way to summarize Ryan’s impact is through the words of some of the people he helped:
“We have lived in our house 30 years and would like to age in place. As our mobility has decreased, we find daily activities have become more challenging. The ramp will give us a safe walkway to our cars.”
“Your efforts were a great gift to our family, and I’m sure have been to many others. This ramp works perfectly and is beautiful too!”
“You don’t know how BLESSED I feel with my new ramp. With all my daughter and I suffer through daily in pain, we are grateful.”
“Thank you and your team for building my ramp! It has changed my life – emotionally and physically.”
Thank you for everything Ryan. You will be missed. Good luck on this next adventure!
The COVID-19 pandemic created unique challenges as we worked to provide home safety and accessibility modifications for older adults in a safe and effective manner. One positive thing that came out of the pandemic was the launch of our Safe at Home kits, which made it possible for us to continue to provide services that would benefit older adults when we could not safely send staff or volunteers into their homes.
The kits are provided free of charge to low-income older adults and include a smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector, no-slip bath treads, dawn to dusk lightbulbs and nightlights, grabbers, mini-flash light, batteries, kitchen fire extinguisher, reusable masks, sanitizing wipes, and an application for Safe at Home services. These kits are funded under an award with Trellis as part of the Older Americans Act and through the Minnesota Department of Human Services Live Well at Home program.
Our Safe at Home kits have been enthusiastically welcomed, and they have an immediate positive impact on the safety, health, and well-being of low-income older adults we are able to serve through this component of the program. The kits also help to raise awareness which will lead many of the homeowners to ask for additional help needed to remain safely and independently in their own homes.
If you are interested in volunteering to assemble and/or distribute kits or if you would like to request a kit, please email Tom at tom@rtmn.org.
Please note that our Safe at Home kits are only available in the 7-County Twin Cities Metro and in Cottonwood, Jackson, Nobles, and Pipestone Counties in Southwest Minnesota. In order to be eligible to receive a kit, you must be a low-income senior (60+).
