Blue Hill group helps neighbors > Community rallies to lend a hand

BLUE HILL – In an overorganized world, Neighborcare is a nonorganization that seeks to give aid and comfort to anyone in the Blue Hill Peninsula area and beyond who needs it.

The purpose of the self-described “joyful band of volunteers” is to serve the “ill, dying or injured neighbors in their efforts to live their lives to their fullest capacity, and-or to find resources that support this purpose.”

To do that Neighborcare has compiled a list of 70 to 80 volunteers who are just a phone call away from providing the helping hand their neighbors need. And by being unorganized, Neighborcare is free to respond to any type of health-related need in the community without concern about whether the need or the needy fits a profile or meets a certain mandate.

“Organizations by their nature create gaps because they have become so specialized,” co-founder Maggie Davis said. “And in those gaps are people who suffer and who need, and we might be there too someday.”

Neighborcare began more than five years ago through the initial efforts of co-founders Davis and Jeanne Gaudette, starting with a series of meetings of people interested in the idea of neighbors serving neighbors.

“The idea is that we can bring down the walls between us and turn them into bridges going in two directions,” Davis said. “When we do that, we get as much as we give and we give as much as we get. Strangers quickly become family, or at least friends.”

Neighborcare focuses its efforts on those most in need, Davis said, the ones most likely to fall through the cracks of the existing system.

They tap other services and organizations such as the local hospital and area hospice organizations in order to find those in need and to make sure those needs are met.

With a list of 70 volunteers and a mailing list of more than 500, Neighborcare seeks to link those willing to serve with those who need it. The service is varied and can range from a simple ride to the doctor to delivering meals and visiting, to providing care for pets and plants. Some volunteers will do emergency housekeeping, provide respite care and, in some cases, provide hands-on care.

Neighborcare literature says it offers to health-related assistance, but it deliberately takes a broad view of what constitutes health.

“We have chosen in a purposeful and focused way to be far-ranging , rather than being so by default, and have come full circle to our initial intention to fill in the gaps, and do that well,” Davis wrote in a short history of Neighborcare. “Someone called us the ‘honey that flows between the cracks of the toasted English muffin.’ It is our hope that we achieve a caregiver-caregetter balance that allows each person to serve and be served in heartful, creative respectful ways.”‘

That is why pet care and plant care are listed as services right along with respite and hands-on care.

“When you care for something someone loves, like a plant or a pet, you are caring for them,” Davis said.

In some ways, Davis said, the group has taken on a life of its own, expanding beyond the knowledge of its originators.

“We might arrange for a volunteer to visit someone once,” she said. “We may find out months later that she’s not only been visiting that person once a week but also visiting her next-door neighbor. There are people being served that I don’t know about.”

Neighborcare has not sought official nonprofit status and seeks donations only occasionally. In a recent newsletter, editors reminded volunteers that they were no longer seeking donations.

“If we don’t need anything, we just don’t ask,” she said.

Donated funds are used mainly for printing the newsletter and mailing it. Sometimes, Davis said, a person will have a special need and extra money will be used for that.

Although Neighborcare has focused its efforts on the communities on and around the Blue Hill Peninsula, Davis said, the scope of the idea is limitless. Other groups are forming in the Rockland and Sullivan areas, though not necessarily under the Neighborcare name, and there as been interest from other states such as Colorado, Vermont and Ohio. Davis has spoken to groups throughout Maine, but has not yet gone outside the state, but that may come in the future, she said.

What also may come is a time when a nonorganization is no longer needed. That, she said, is her vision.

“Someday, we may become obsolete,” she said. “Someday, the idea of volunteering – which is so necessary now – might fade away and we all will care for each other naturally.”

For more information about Neighborcare, call 374-2273.