CARE in the Time of COVID
- Isabella JM
- Jan 28, 2021
- 10 min read
Interview with the cofounders of CARE, newfound collaborator of Reinnervate and newly formed club at UC Berkeley
Amy Zhong and Lilly Tang care.
While it may seem melodramatic to draw any parallels between "Love in the Time of Cholera" and the current state of human affection after months of social distancing restrictions due to concerns about the novel coronavirus, the psychological toll of social isolation has become a more visible issue than ever before. The struggle to escape a pervading feeling of numbness may beset some, while a heightened sense of anxiety afflicts others. In the midst of unprecedented circumstances, everyone unaccustomed to social isolation is simultaneously experiencing the range of emotional challenges it brings. Zhong and Tang, realizing that for some, social isolation was not a new phenomenon, felt it was the time to bring to fruition their both ambitious and compassionate initiative: CARE (Creative Arts to Reinspire and Empower).
Last year, the two students from UC Berkeley, both Molecular Cell and Biology majors (Amy double majoring in Art History and Lilly minoring in Education) were inspired to start their own student organization in order to ameliorate the pervasive issues faced by seniors nationally and internationally.
It started with a trip Lilly took to visit her grandparents in China. Once she had become aware of the conditions her relatives faced in the retirement home they resided in, she pursued the root causes of their maltreatment. She arrived at the conclusion that the issues affecting seniors all over the world were based not only in physical isolation but in psychological isolation as well. She noted how the exclusion of elderly persons from society was a widespread cultural phenomenon. One that affected her and those she loved. She was determined to find something that she could do.
With the help of longtime friend, Amy, who had a sustained interest in the therapeutic capabilities of art for Alzheimer’s patients, and with the biological and service oriented background that both of them had received from majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, they conceived the idea for CARE, the student organization they have started in order to address these issues. Originally they had planned to organize museum tours for Alzheimer’s patients in collaboration with BAMPFA (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), however, after the pandemic hit they had to adapt in order to fulfill the mission they had created for themselves.
To introduce our own collaboration with CARE I interviewed them to see what they had to say, in their own words, about their work and the increasing visibility of the issues they have chosen to take on, especially during the pandemic.
“I must say that the residents, after asking them at random, have all responded the same. They have expressed that they truly enjoy all of the presentations and are so appreciative of the student’s efforts and talents”
- Nurse from one senior center involved with CARE
Excerpts from a recent conversation. Edited for clarity.
Why did you feel the need to start CARE? And what was your inspiration for doing that?
Tang: First of all, well this is a little bit more personal to me, my family immigrated to the US when I was in middle school, and my grandparents, as a result, had to be admitted into a senior living community where they were taken care of by caregivers. When I got to visit them when I went back for vacation I was able to gain exposure to the conditions that they were living in and just how underserved and underfunded these programs are. As I got to learn more about the healthcare industry, specifically senior services, I learned that this is not a problem that’s unique to the Chinese society, that it is also very relevant here in the US as well. So my initial exposure to senior care kind of always just left, like an imprint, and a spot in my heart, in some ways, to want to do my best in serving and helping these communities that are marginalized. Amy and I were friends because we took a lot of lower division classes together as MCB majors and Amy was also very interested in art, specifically art’s therapeutic effects for Alzheimer’s patients, so she asked me if I wanted to collaborate and make an organization to help these specific populations through our mutual passion for art and service. Our original mission for our organization [involved a collaboration] with BAMPFA to give more customized and catered art museum tours to seniors who were suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia-related disorders. Unfortunately, due to the disruption posed by COVID, we had to adjust and improvise.
During the pandemic we realized that the population we were serving could be enlarged to encompass the entire senior population, they as a group that is extremely vulnerable to the virus and has been suffering from isolation due to the quarantine and social distancing restrictions. We realized this was really the time to stick with our mission and our beliefs in terms of doing as much as we can to help these seniors.
We originally didn’t know what we wanted to do but we just wanted to reach out to these senior centers to see if they needed any help or if there was some way students could provide these seniors with enrichment or interactive activities so they could take their minds off of their loneliness and the isolation posed by quarantine and thankfully a lot of the senior centres responded and gave us an overview of what they have been dealing with in terms of programs that have been cut short and how they have been adjusting to the virus.What we decided on was the format of these zoom shows to provide to the seniors artistic enrichments and activities for them to view and watch either in isolation or socially distanced, given the resources available, as a way to foster and support the community.
We are really glad that it has really grown and we have hosted many more shows and collaborated with many more senior centers as well and we hope that even after the pandemic is over that our program will continue because we think that this problem that these seniors are suffering from, this loneliness, is not unique or new for them just because of the pandemic. Their lives have been pretty similar, pretty isolated from society, just because of their situations and the communities they’ve been living at.
Zhong: I guess my relationships with older adults also stemmed from my personal experience being raised by my grandparents when I was in elementary school. I was living in Shanghai at that time and I immigrated to the United States in 7th grade. Before that there was a lot of moving in between Shanghai and Canada because that’s where my parents worked, but when I was in Shanghai my grandparents were actually the ones that raised me. It was really sad to leave them to go to the United states because that meant I could only see them every summer or so. And then this summer I was actually going to go back but, you know now we’re all really restrained to the screens of our cell phones so we can only really facetime or zoom call and that’s that.
But I wanted to add on regarding the loneliness portion of this entire thing. I actually volunteer at a crisis hotline, or you can also call it a warm line, and it’s specifically for older adults. You’d be very surprised at how many people call us every day. We have over 150 volunteers and all of us have to volunteer at least 8 hours a week. It's surprising to see that people might not even get the chance to talk to one person in a week. [Sometimes] we’d be the only people that they talk to.
The interactions that you usually have on that hotline, are they usually people talking about the struggles they’ve been having in isolation and kind of the ways they’ve been dealing with that?
Zhong: I think most of the calls we get are just seniors that are living in senior centers. Due to the fact that they’ve been suspended of all of their other social activities, I feel like they call us even more. Due to the volume of calls that we get we have a one call per day policy and it's limited to ten minutes. It makes me feel like I’m working in an assembly line a little bit just because it's so limiting and you can’t really talk about anything in10 minutes so a lot of it is small talk, but fortunately, a lot of our callers are long term volunteers, so if you take their call twice a week you'll slowly get to know them better. I do get some crisis calls, there was one person who was suicidal, but those aren’t the most common calls. I would say the most common ones are just people that are socially isolated and they are just calling us because they want someone to talk to or just chat with, even if it's just really brief, just for like ten minutes or so.
How do you think that’s informed your ability to participate in this club and help to alleviate that sense of loneliness?
Zhong: During our shows, in the beginning, we try to ask our students to say something about themselves, so we ask students to answer a question. For example, on halloween we asked them “what was your most memorable halloween memory?” and we asked every one of them to give a couple sentences of encouragement and positive thoughts to seniors before their performances. unfortunately because of the current layout of things its not possible for seniors to talk to us to directly give us feedback but we do see them smiling, we do see them clapping, so in a sense that’s also a type of interaction.
How do you think that the pandemic has made the issues faced by seniors a lot more visible considering that they are very vulnerable to the virus itself and have long-faced isolation similar to what we are all experiencing right now? How do you think in the future we can make these issues more visible?
Tang: I think that is the million dollar question that we are all struggling with right now. Everyone is starting to recognize what seniors have been experiencing this whole time. Unfortunately, just by the way that society progresses these populations often get left behind. I think that especially in the US, but also around the world, we’re living in a very ageist time. We put these seniors in their isolated communities and we don’t see them, we aren’t necessarily reminded of their existence, their presence and their suffering, but hopefully through the pandemic and everyone’s reflections and personal experiences they’ll be more mindful and just like us, will be reminded to call their grandparents more, to keep in touch with them, and hopefully, be able to recognize that there’s always something that we can do to elevate their quality of life.
Zhong: Just learning about all of this and how senior isolation is a huge public health issue has actually made me really scared of getting older. When your body is failing you and you can't really take care of yourself then you’re forced to go into nursing homes or assisted living houses or senior centers. A lot of care at senior centers or nursing homes is not adequate. You know, you hear about abusive caregivers. Things aren’t always peaceful and harmonious. People aren’t always just playing bingo. I mean it may seem like that but like actually under the surface there are a lot of issues with overmedication and bills being really expensive.
“Thank you for making their moments enjoyable" - Nurse
Tang: I think it definitely is something from Asian culture that we have a lot more emphasis on taking care of elders and taking care of those who are more senior than you. I grew up seeing what my mom faced in terms of taking care of her parents and what my dad faced in the same situation. I have the expectation and am already considering how I want to make my living so that I am able to best accommodate and take care of my parents when they’re old. And what I have done when it comes to my responsibility to do that. I really think culture plays a big role in terms of how we’re regarding and we’re treating these issues. the silver lining of this pandemic is that in some ways people are starting to reevaluate how we’re treating certain populations and marginalized groups.
Zhong: You know, I think in our society we prize like things that are fast paced. We have fast food restaurants, we prize things that are innovative, that are new. Going into consumerism and capitalism and all of that. And I think once you’re older, you’re no longer new, you’re no longer innovative, you’re no longer efficient with your body or mind and so I think that’s also one of the reasons ageism persists in our modern society.
The definition of reinnervation is, “the restoration, either spontaneously or by surgical grafting, of nerve supply to a part of the body from which it has been lost” and so in our club, Reinnervate, our goal is to connect with others and reestablish feeling where it may have been lost before. How do you think we can reconnect with others on everyday basis, especially in a time like we are now facing?
Tang: Honestly I think that’s what we’re doing right now, we’re connecting. The pandemic has definitely reshaped my perception and my definition of how I should regard and treat my relationships. I have contacted and reached out to a lot more of my older friends that I haven't talked to in a long time. Specifically, have to be maintained and can be maintained across distances through technology through arts and through other means. What we’re trying to do here at CARE is well to, in some ways, deliver art through technology, so that we can transcend the physical distances between these communities.
Zhong: And because the number of collaborating senior centers that we can reach to and have that direct connection with is really limited right now we’re trying to establish an online platform where we can upload all of our recordings and also record other types of artistic, creative creation process, the videos and like perhaps even virtual museum tours that are catered to seniors. And so this is what we are really trying to work on right now in hopes of reaching more people in the future.
If you would like to get involved with CARE and/or perform in one of their virtual talent shows check out their instagram! Or fill out this interest form to get in touch! There are somethings to be done.
Interest Form: https://forms.gle/zwccPQFApDWKWpjE9
Contact:
Gmail: ucberkeley.care@gmail.com
Facebook: @UCBerkeley.CARE
Instagram: @care.ucberkeley
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