Southeast Seattle Senior Center

Would you help a senior citizen cross the street? Would you hold their hand and help them climb up or down the stairs? What would you do if they really must go up the stairs, but physically, they can’t climb them? Hmmm. How about helping them get on the elevator! Oh darn, what if the elevator is broken? Do you think your options are exhausted? Do you just throw up your hands thinking all hope is lost? Well, all hope is not lost. You can donate toward repairing the elevator so the senior citizen can access the activities and classes available to him or her upstairs.

The SouthEast Seattle Senior Center needs your help! Our 40-year-old elevator is irreparable! All moving parts (except the cab) must be replaced, and the electrical components must be brought up to City code.

Regularly, the elevator cannot be called to a specific floor. For instance, if you are in the parking garage, the elevator can stick on the floor it is on and might not come down. Then the person must walk up the hill and down the street to get from the parking garage to the Center’s front door. If you are in the building on the second floor and the elevator is stuck on the first floor, then you must walk down the stairs. What happens if you are in a wheelchair or on a walker or just cannot negotiate stairs? That person will be stuck on the second floor!! We have even had the elevator stuck in between floors for hours. It would not budge!

In one of the pictures in this GoFundMe campaign, the elevator door opened and then it jumped down 3.5 inches! The door opened and then closed half way! Someone could have tripped and seriously hurt themselves!

The elevator vendor maintenance has said on several occasions that the elevator cannot be repaired; it is original to the building with parts that are no longer being manufactured - they must be replaced.

Because of the pandemic, the seniors have not been coming into the Center. Instead, since March 2020, the Center has redirected its services by preparing up to 180 lunches (mostly hot), packaging them and delivering them to seniors’ homes – Monday through Friday. And while we have continued our fundraising efforts to fix the elevator, we were forced to cancel our annual fundraisers held after March, 2020, due to the virus.

WHY HELP?

Elevators are required to move our members from one floor to the next. At the SouthEast Seattle Senior Center, it transports seniors between the parking garage and the second floor. Without the elevator, our seniors cannot access the programs they enjoy like exercise classes, congregate lunch, foot care, massage, social services, weaving, arts and crafts or just to socialize with their friends.

• Seniors are valued in many cultures, and this is also true at the SouthEast Seattle Senior Center. While the majority are retired now, they were our schoolteachers, nurses, our mail carriers, fire fighters, they were the cashier clerks at our favorite grocery stores.
• They are our parents and grandparents. Many don’t have family and they become isolated or forgotten.

That’s where the Senior Center comes to the rescue. We are a home-away-from-home; we give many seniors a sense of purpose – a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

WHAT WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR?

People understand the good work that we are doing at the SouthEast Seattle Senior Center. And they also understand how vital the Senior Center is to providing activities and support to seniors so they can live self-sufficient and purposeful lives in their golden years.

WHAT IS THE COST?

The entire project will cost $168,000!!! Although we have had many donations, we still need to raise $60,000. And we won’t mention the need for new front doors. Any money that exceeds our request for $60,000 will go towards the front door project.

Thank you so much for caring about the seniors we serve and for your generosity! And thank you for anything that you can do to help us!!!