Cady Stribling
Features Editor
cstribling1@murraystate.edu
Within a day, Murray State alumnae Rose and Rossetta Jackson gathered volunteers together in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to bring a building full of senior citizens essential supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, their Adopt-a-Grandparent program has enough support to assist senior citizens in three different homes.
It began when Rossetta, 2010 graduate with a bachelor’s in business management, checked on their mother in Westwood Senior Homes to see if she was in need of any essentials. She found that multiple people in the building were in need.
“Rossetta made a list of each apartment and what they needed, and she reached out on Facebook to see if we could get people to ‘adopt’ a senior citizen to purchase the essentials they needed and to love on them as well,” Rose said.
Rose, who earned a bachelor’s in organizational communication in 2009, said the response was overwhelming with every apartment filled by the end of the day after the initial post.
“Rossetta named it Adopt-a-Grandparent at that point because the name just fit the cause,” Rose said.
Rose said the twins extended their services to adjacent senior homes when people wanted to volunteer but they had run out of grandparents to help. Currently, they care for 150 people.
At each facility, the senior citizens must cook for themselves. However, Rosa said many are on oxygen or have an illness that makes it difficult for them to do so.
“With money people were donating we decided to feed at least one hot meal a day for all three buildings on top of having them adopted out,” Rose said.
With donations, they purchase the meals or cook it themselves and deliver them. Often, local restaurants donate food to support the cause.
“We are coming up on our first full month and it has been a truly humbling experience to do what the bible says to do, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Rosa said.
Rose and Rossetta are accepting donations so they can purchase food for all three buildings. They also struggle to find hand sanitizer, Lysol and bleach wipes.
Donations can be sent by Paypal to rosejackson1978@yahoo.com, by CashApp to $NotAboutMe or by Venmo to @NotAboutMe.