Pen Pals meet at RSVP Pen Pal Program celebration
Thu, 06/02/2022 - 4:44pm
admin
By:
Beki Groenwald TPD Staff
CRESCO - After four months of exchanging letters, 52 third graders finally got to meet their pen pals. On May 5, at Crestwood Elementary School, the Northeast Iowa RSVP Pen Pal Program hosted a small celebration of connection and friendship.
It all began months ago, when the third grade class of Crestwood Elementary and 52 volunteers from Northeast Iowa RSVP filled out “All About Me” sheets. Covering everything from family members and pets to favorite foods and colors, the information on these sheets was used to match pen pals with one another and give each duo a foundation for starting a conversation.
The children wrote the first letter to their new pen pals, learning all about how to construct a letter, address an envelope, ask and answer questions and hold a written conversation. The RSVP volunteer letter writers then responded, and 52 pen pal friendships were born.
The groups exchanged three rounds of letters over four months, getting to know each other and discussing their respective lives and experiences.
One of the goals of the Pen Pal Program is to help different generations connect socially. Many students got to learn what it was like to go to school “back in the good ol’ days,” while RSVP volunteers read about everything from cherished pets to favorite video games.
“There was excitement on both ends,” RSVP Director Deana Hageman said. “Volunteers were dropping by the library asking, ‘When are the letters coming?’”
RSVP is a part of AmeriCorps Seniors, a federal agency that connects seniors with volunteer programs according to their skills and interests. From being a pen pal at Crestwood Elementary to acting as a docent for the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation to being a blood drive assistant at the Red Cross Blood Drive, the opportunities for volunteering through RSVP in Howard County are many and varied.
There are both one-time volunteer opportunities, such as offering tax help to others through the VITA program, and recurrent ones, like delivering meals to home-bound seniors or reading to kids in local schools.
