Why We Join
Benefits of Membership
The benefits of Wider Horizons membership are as wide-ranging as your imagination. If you can imagine it, offer it, coordinate it, facilitate it, or support it, it will happen. You will gain tangibly and intangibly both by your participation and your volunteering to offer your assistance to others. These activities are often the catalyst for forming deep friendships. Moreover, under current Covid-19 restrictions, many of these activities are still available virtually.
The primary benefit categories – and a few examples of each are:
Educational programming – Book or discussion groups, lecture/speaker series on critical topics affecting personal and community well-being, social/political action groups, and anti-racism training and discussion. Our members are eager to learn and to teach, seeking out new experiences and information that challenge our thinking, attitudes, and behaviors.
Social activities – Outings to museums, theater, concerts, movies, happy hours, or shared meals, music making, play reading, and co-cooking. Through such social engagement, our members experience hospitality, intimate conversations, and build a strong sense of community.
Fitness activities – Both formal and informal activities happen. Hikes, attendance at fitness classes at senior center, friendly walks are offered to members.
Personal/financial support – Technology trouble shooting, tax preparation, filing insurance claims, de-cluttering or downsizing – whatever members identify as needed on a short-term basis.
Living support – Transportation, home repairs, friendly visits, gardening, pet care, meal preparation, errands, and referrals/recommendations about vendors and services such as favorite plumbers or gardeners.
Health assistance – Health advocacy, medical/dental/home care information and referrals, caregiver support and advocacy. In addition to a member-produced advocacy handbook, Preparing for a Serious Health Event, a distinctive benefit is access to trained Health Advocates. Advocates assist our members by helping them understand health benefits, interacting with their health support group and heath care professionals, attending appointments, providing medical translation, appointment setting and coordination, and identifying additional medical and health resources.
Volunteer opportunities in all the areas above. Our members enjoy the countless intangible benefits of “giving back” to others, often forming ongoing relationships through their volunteering.
Underlying all these categories is how members and Denise, our Executive Director, are vital sources of socio-emotional support, independent of formal activities. As the pandemic has made us all aware, it is all about supportive relationships.