Helping Hands invites donations to help seniors

Helping Hands volunteers spread out and do essential work in prepping bags with grocery items for later delivery to senior citizens in need. The group has continued its efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and has seen donations wane.

Senior citizens throughout Canyon Lake and its surrounding cities depend on a Canyon Lake-based organization for food and other needs. Helping Hands is particularly busy during the COVID-19 pandemic as these seniors are home-bound with no access to transportation to obtain food and other supplies.

With the additional demand, donations Helping Hands depends on are drying up.

“Many people have concern for their financial situation during this crisis and donations have reached an all-time low,” Helping Hands Executive Director Bob Sasser said. “Helping Hands relies on neighbors helping neighbors in need. It’s individual families volunteering and donating their dollars that is at our core.”

Helping Hands is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in Canyon Lake dedicated to feeding the hungry. The group places gray bins at Pack, Wrap and Post and elsewhere where contributors can donate non-perishable food items.

Financial contributions are also a major part of the group’s ability to function.

“Many companies in the local area have richly blessed us with donations in the past,” Bob said. “But those donations have nearly dried up during this pandemic. Our recipients are in neighboring cities besides Canyon Lake, namely Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Murrieta, Hemet, Temecula, Perris and Wildomar. They depend on us for monthly deliveries to their doors.”

In order to feed elderly shut-ins who are food fragile, developmentally disabled and victims of family violence, Helping Hands is in need of the community’s help.

“Please continue to put canned goods and packaged foods in the bins,” Bob said. “But we especially need financial aid to continue to buy the bulk foods we deliver to our clients and to keep our van and truck functioning.”

No one at Helping Hands receives a salary, Bob said. During the pandemic, the organization’s hundreds of volunteers have kept right on delivering to its hungry clients, packing bags for delivery and keeping in touch with the lonely by phone and notes.

Helping Hands volunteers collect food, bag it and then distribute it to families and people in crisis while assisting them with guidance and information leading toward stabilization. In addition, the group provides disabled seniors home delivery of groceries on a regular basis.

“Recently a couple of our volunteers wearing masks and gloves delivered groceries to the doorstep of an elderly couple in Menifee,” Bob said. “They knocked on the door and stepped back to maintain social distancing to protect both the shut-ins and themselves. An elderly man came to the door and saw the groceries. With tears in his eyes he said he and his wife had run out of food. He said the bus doesn’t come and of course he does not know about a thing called Uber. He wanted to pay for the groceries and could not stop saying ‘Thank You’.”

Helping Hands is asking the community to help it continue this valuable work. Donations can be mailed to: Helping Hands Group, P.O. Box 1122, Suite 200, 31566 Railroad Canyon Road, Canyon Lake, CA 92587.

“Helping Hands will do everything we can,” Bob said, “to make sure our seniors have food and a little compassion during these trying times.”