The last 18 months has been a time of re-inventing Adventures in Caring (AiC), in order to make the mission sustainable and our services accessible. We had to invent an entirely new way of operating, from the ground up. This is embodied in two new initiatives that will take us into the future: Student-Led Intergenerational Initiative and Online Education Initiative.

1. Student-Led Intergenerational Initiative

Byron Rosenthal, Jesse Basra and Shane Pathania, all Raggedy volunteers, were members of the Mu Delta pre-med fraternity on the UCSB campus. I asked for their help, and they responded with an enthusiastic “Yes, we can do this!”They suggested we form an Adventures in Caring on-campus organization. Together we created five committees through which the work on campus would be organized.

Next, I reached out to a former Raggedy volunteer, Anmole Ahdi, who is taking a gap year between graduating and applying to medical school, in order to care for his mother after his father died last year. I asked him if he could work for AiC as part-time Program Coordinator (all we could afford) and he agreed. Anmole now coordinates with the five on-campus committee leaders.

The committee leaders for the coming school year are: Shane Pathania (President), Krishna Balagopal (Outreach), Jesse Basra (Program Documentation), Andrea Ure (Continued Learning), Isabel Arana (Service & Fundraising).

Together with Anmole, Byron (who is graduating) April 2019 Volunteer Training: New trainees and assistant trainers with founder, Karen Fox. Teaching the Art and Practice of Communicating with Compassion since 1984 2graduating) and myself, we planned out the coming 2019 fall quarter, with who does what week by week.

This has tremendous potential. Our volunteer internship now has three tiers in which students can participate, with increasing layers of responsibility and skill:

1. As Raggedy volunteers befriending the most socially isolated frail elderly in our community. Through practice, they develop the compassion, emotional maturity, and ability to communicate with those who are seriously ill, injured and dying—at a standard that helps to restore well-being.
2. As training assistants coaching new trainees. They learn how to give insightful, constructive feedback at a standard that develops this skill set in others.
3. As committee leaders organizing the program. They learn the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle of continual improvement, and how facilitate learning and planning conversations. At our monthly meetings they report to the AiC board of directors and respond to board questions. In doing so they build very practical project management skills.

Thanks to Byron’s leadership and the members of this team, AiC is now positioned, both on campus and in the community, to run the program this way throughout the coming school year. Other fraternities and sororities are already expressing interest. The experience we gain in the next school year will also prepare the program to be replicated on other campuses. This is one pivotal way that the Raggedy program can be sustained and grow in the future.

Oxygen for Caregivers is made by caregivers, for caregivers. It is a distillation of practical wisdom from the dedicated nurses, doctors, therapists, chaplains, first responders and volunteers of the Santa Barbara community. It is an eight-hour self-paced course, made of twenty-minute sessions and five-minute steps, so that it can fit into a tight schedule. It is accessible to anyone with a desktop, laptop, pad or smartphone.

The high production value makes it a pleasure to watch and to listen to. Oxygen for Caregivers truly lives up to its name. It is a breath of fresh air that actually reduces your stress as you take it.

We are using the University of North Carolina’s Posttraumatic Growth Scale to measure the improvements it produces in well-being. There are professional benefits too —it is approved for continuing education units for nurses and other health professionals.

This online course is a gift Adventures in Caring is giving to the world: a truly effective program that gives caregivers the ability to move from the suffering of burnout and compassion fatigue, to the well-being of a life they love to live. Now it is available to the world, and all proceeds from it will return to support volunteer caregivers in the Santa Barbara area.

Thanks to Bent and Natalija, the AiC office now doubles as a video and audio production studio, in which we will continue to produce high quality online courses on the practice of compassion, at a standard that restores well-being, in both the giver and receiver of care.The studio is a key to making our work accessible on-demand, anywhere, anytime. It enables AiC to be an even more effective creative hub for social innovation and human flourishing.

I hope you will join us on this adventure. Now that we have made our program instantly and easily accessible everywhere, to take the next step—we need your help to pass the word.Here is the link to learn more about the program: https://oxygen-for-caregivers.org

If you would like to become an affiliate, or review the program, or register for it, please let Simon know by email at: Simon@AdventuresInCaring.org.