Reading Materials for Elderly Patients at Home
During normal times, Bridge of Books is busy donating
TheJournalNJ.com | JUNE 2020 21
books to students across New Jersey. With the
recent stay-at-home orders, Bridge of Books shifted
its focus to collecting books and delivering those books
to patients in the three New Jersey “pop-up” hospitals
caring for COVID-19 patients.
At the same time, Bridge of Books Director Abby
Daly received a call asking if the organization could help
a senior shut-in who could not go to the library for the
foreseeable future. That’s when Daly contacted IMA – Integrated
Medicine Alliance to partner up to bring books
to IMA’s senior population.
IMA sent an email to its senior patients, letting
them know that Bridge of Books would do a front porch
“Since libraries are closed and many seniors don’t
have e-readers, we thought this would be a great way to
safely bring books into our patients’ homes so they did
not have to go out during the stay at home,” IMA President Dr. Roger
Thompson, of Middletown, said.
To receive books, all IMA patients had to do was email Daly with
the genre, title or style of book they would like dropped off. Then she
-
ceived from her recent book drive and deliver them. River Road Books
in Fair Haven also donated materials for Bridge of Books to deliver.
To date, Bridge of Books has donated more than 20 bundles of
books to IMA’s senior population.
“Even though our mission is to provide children’s books, I was
happy to leverage the Bridge of Books name and our tremendous
network of supporters to put out a call for adult books,” Daly said.
“The response was beyond overwhelming. Thinking about how many
other Monmouth County seniors are isolated right now with little to
no access to books, I reached out to IMA to see if we could work together
to get an offer to deliver books out to their senior patients. As
of today, the list of
requests for books
is close to 40! I was
most touched by a
92-year-old woman
who shared that
she had just lost her
husband, that she
was down to her last
book and that she
was so thrilled to get
a bag of books.”
Daly continued,
-
nitely not expanding
our mission to
include adult books,
I am really happy
that we could step in
Bridge of Books Director Abby Daly sorts books to be delivered to IMA’s senior population.
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ly a measure of the tremendous support we receive from the community. In
these challenging times, everyone needs access to books. We will get through
this together.”
Samantha Cole and Company
Interior Design
ASID
Creating timeless interiors that always reflect our clients’ taste.
Rumson, New Jersey
San Francisco, California
732-222-7493
www.samanthacoleinteriors.com
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