ConnectedLiving’s Nationwide “Seniors to Soldiers” Campaign Donates Hundreds of Care Packages to U.S. Troops

Senior residents across the U.S. participated in ConnectedLiving’s “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign by reaching out to currently deployed servicemen and women

ConnectedLiving, the leader in bridging seniors and technology, announced today that their “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign has generated hundreds of care packages and nearly 1,500 hand-written letters for currently deployed troops. The “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign was part of ConnectedLiving’s annual “Day of Service” and connected senior residents in 15 senior living communities across the country with U.S. soldiers currently serving overseas.  

Starting on Veterans Day and continuing through the month of December, senior care providers, such as Brookdale Senior Living, EPOCH Senior Living, Sunrise Senior Living, Emeritus Senior Living, Atlanta Housing Authority, Beacon Communities, Benchmark Senior Living and ACTS Retirement-Life, partnered with ConnectedLiving to host “Seniors to Soldiers” events in a number of their senior living communities.

“Today’s seniors are a very patriotic and community service-oriented group. The “Seniors to Soldiers” program recognized this passion, and gave seniors an opportunity to share their life experiences, passions, and interests with those who would most benefit from that wisdom and support- today’s men and women in active duty ,” said Sarah Hoit, CEO and Co-Founder of ConnectedLiving. “We were thrilled to have so many senior care providers with locations across the country partner with us for this campaign and we were even more honored to have so many of our nation’s seniors participate and really get behind our initiative to reach out to soldiers.”

Residents in these communities had the opportunity to write and send holiday cards and letters to U.S. military and share their own wartime experience by recording personal video messages using ConnectedLiving’s memoir function. Many senior living communities also included a donations box at their specific locations to allow those seniors who were feeling generous to donate items, such as toiletries, stationary products, books and snacks, to our troops. Some senior residents even incorporated the “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign into their knitting clubs by knitting caps and scarves for our troops.

ConnectedLiving partnered with Operation Troop Support, a Danvers-based non-profit, to distribute these letters, memoirs, holiday cards and other donations to active military members throughout the world.

“Operation Troop Support is truly overwhelmed and humbled by the tremendous outpouring of generosity from the ConnectedLiving community across the country. Over the past several weeks, ConnectedLiving has organized, collected and sent beautiful donations from a number of their communities to support our troops serving on the front lines,” said Dick Moody, Founder and Director of Operation Troop Support. “The items that these senior residents donated have covered a wide array of needs and the action the ConnectedLiving family has taken has benefited soldiers across the globe.”

Operation Troop Support sends nearly 200 care packages to our nation’s troops every week and was able to rise above that number during ConnectedLiving’s month-long “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign. A number of Executive Directors at ConnectedLiving communities enjoyed the campaign so much and felt so strongly about the initiative that they plan on repeating the donation activities in February.

ConnectedLiving’s “Seniors to Soldiers” campaign was carried out by seniors living in states all across the country, including California, Illinois, Colorado, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia and many others. The program was designed to provide meaningful community and intergenerational connections. Through a donation from Rainbow Loom, which provided 300 mini looms- enough to make over 2000 bracelets - students from around the country joined in the “Seniors to Soldiers” momentum.   Students taught seniors how to loom as well as provided bracelets with accompanying notes of thanks for the care packages.