Dorot

Dorot is an organization that works to help the home-bound elderly. My mom and I found out about Dorot through the Children for Children Martin Luther King Day event. Since then we have been working to help Dorot by writing birthday cards for them to send to homebound seniors, making holiday visits to seniors, and doing a fun, interactive cooking event with some of the seniors.

Dorot makes it easy to help out with the simplest project being writing birthday cards to the home-bound elderly. This is a project that we love to do not only because it's fast, but because it makes the seniors so happy. This year on my birthday, my friends and I made a bunch of cards to bring to Dorot. They are located a few blocks away from our school, so the project was very easy to do.


Visiting home-bound elderly people on holidays is another project that is great because of how happy it makes the seniors. Many of the people helped by Dorot don't have family to visit them over the holidays, so it really brightens their day to get a visit and a holiday package from someone who cares. The people who we have met have loved telling stories, and they are very interesting to listen to. It is a really fun project that I highly recommend.


The other project my family has done for Dorot is a cooking project with the seniors. The project was one of Dorot's afterschool projects for kids and seniors. These projects include both cooking and art projects for various ages. In the project we did, kids and seniors worked together to cook a mud cake (a combination of chocolate pudding and a bunch of other delicious ingredients which I can't remember). We were split up into groups with some seniors and some kids in each, and all worked together to make (and eat) the cake. It was a fun project for kids and seniors alike.


Grading: Birthday Cards

Efficiency: 9
Easiness: 10
Fun: 8

Holiday Visits

Efficiency: 10
Easiness: 6
Fun: 10

Cooking Projects
The cooking projects and art projects with Dorot have different age groups, so before doing one, make sure that you are the right age for the project. The website is listed below.

Efficiency: 8
Easiness: 7
Fun: 9

Note: Dorot is in a convenient location for people on the Upper West Side, but there are other organizations that do similar things. Dorot is also an organization that is mainly Jewish, so the holiday projects are on Jewish holidays.

Another organization that helps the homebound elderly is City Meals on Wheels. They have a holiday cards project that is very similar to Dorot's birthday card project. Their website is http://www.citymeals.org/.

Dorot's website is http://www.dorotusa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage_DOROT.