02/28/2022
Thank you Earth Angels for Dementia!!!
Dear Earth Angel Friends and Families…
I thought it might be time address the multiple questions on “Why are you selling the building?” an “What exactly do you do?”
Our entire family’s life was turned upside down when my husband, Ralph Caliri, was diagnosed and passed in 2018 from Dementia. Unprepared and scared, we stumbled through his illness that only love can survive. Earth Angels for Dementia was born from his death with a mission to “Care for Caregivers” as a way honor Ralph and let the caregivers know they are not alone.
We will be celebrating our 4th Anniversary this month and it is hard to believe how far we have come. Operating a 501(c3) charity is not for everyone… aside from the mission of Caring for Caregivers, there is the administration, fundraising, building maintenance, creating events, and running a full time 24/7 business on a volunteer basis… and it’s not easy. Our Caregivers become part of our family. And in just the last two weeks we attended funerals of two Caregivers who were loved very dearly by all of us.
Covid changed everything… our building was closed for 20 months… yet we kept it up and financed it when there was little money coming in. During that time… we worked from home, maintaining our relationships with the Dementia Caregivers, delivered weekly food to personally check in , and provided resources through their difficult journey.
Then, we immediately went into motion Caring for the Caregivers of our Community…. The First Responders and HealthCare Heroes… with free meals at local restaurants in our Gratitude to Go program and creating videos and UTube channels for them to use from the privacy of their own homes for stress relief when they came home exhausted and concerned for their own well being. We distributed over 5000 meals to our Hometown Heroes and almost 1000 Easter Baskets to local families in the last two years and in partnership with Hamilton Cares Initiative and the Hamilton Township Police Dept, we were “Secret Santa’s” to over 100 families in town last Christmas.
We are currently working with the BOE to provide our teachers tools to create Mindfulness and Stress Relief programs … trusting some of these skills will eventually pass on to our kids.
We have great resources in the building too! Amethyst Health and ASAAP are both locally owned companies providing mental health services serving adults and children. They now have offices in our building, serving Mays Landing patients accepting Medicare and Medicaid for the many mental health issues our community faces post pandemic.
Angelic Health is a Homecare and Hospice Company, who facilitates our Free Community Caregiver and Grief Support Groups, and is invaluable to families going through Dementia and other Healthcare issues. We are blessed as a community to now have these companies right in our back yard.
So why are we selling? Because much of the money we collect through donations goes to brick and mortar and not directly to the community. We hope to find an investor to buy the building, and we plan to either rent it back from the new owner or rent something else in town. Proceeds will provide the funds to fulfill our mission to Care for Caregivers of the entire community.
Some good news… We realize the financial hardships lots of the community has encountered, therefore beginning March 1 we plan to offer all our Tuesday night events and classes, donation based which means anyone can come, take part, and donate whatever and whenever they can. This, we hope will enable more people to come and enjoy our events more often, receiving the benefit from the healing modalities we offer.
In the meantime, you will continue to hear from us… We will continue our free training and Caregiver and Grief Support Groups and our weekly stress relief events for the entire community so if you can, please consider to pay it forward for those who can’t, and donate at www.earthangelsfordementia.org.
With much gratitude for all your support! 💜
