Life can change in an instant, and when it does, it can often feel like you’re facing it alone. Hear from an incredibly inspiring community leader who has dedicated her life to supporting others who have faced challenges similar to her own.
Rebecca Shields is a true example of resilience and service. She lives by the powerful belief that life isn’t about what you can get from others, but what you can give. In 2008, Rebecca founded New Vision Professional Services, a community-centered organization that provides vital resources to individuals experiencing vision loss or navigating other quality-of-life challenges.
Rebecca takes us through her personal journey, her educational background, and the mission that drives her work. Through New Vision, she offers a variety of classes designed to empower and promote independence, including braille, cooking, daily living skills, financial management, and orientation and mobility training.
New Vision Professional Services
Contact Rebecca Shields: (719) 635-8996
Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude – whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer.
Transcript
VOICEOVER:
This is a Studio 809 podcast. Engage.
CYNTHIA MARGIOTTA, HOST:
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. This is Aging with Altitude, a program striving to provide answers, assistance and advocacy for us elders through the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. We’re coming to you from the Studio 809 Community Podcast Studio at The Next Us, a professional cooperative environment for small businesses in downtown Colorado Springs. I’m your host, Cynthia Margiotta, a geriatric social worker and volunteer with the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging, and CEO of the P.E.A.R.L.S. Program of Colorado and All About Dignity.
2024 marks the 50-year anniversary of the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. To observe that milestone, we’re doing some special episodes in which we share stories of how aging services have changed since 1974, when the Older Coloradans Act was signed. As we share these stories, we’ll continue to provide the kind of inspiration and resources Aging with Altitude is known. Thank you for tuning in, and we ask you, what were you doing in 1974?
Rebecca is a native of Colorado. After her premature birth, then too much oxygen, glaucoma said and leaving her with little vision. At age 5, she started her education at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. The well-rounded services she received at the school helped her to face the big world after graduation. Rebecca has lived life with an attitude that’s about what one can give to others, it’s not only what one can get from them. Rebecca has worked in a variety of areas since she was 16. Pursuing her education has been an important goal. Rebecca holds a graduate degree in mental health counseling, with an emphasis in social worker. Rebecca is a member of both business and personal organizations, city, state and nationwide. In 2008, Rebecca became the founder and owner of New Vision Professional Services. This business provides education, social, emotional support, orientation and mobility classes, and more to the blind and visually impaired. She says, we serve many folks throughout the state in many different ways, assisting individuals who are struggling with vision loss, acts of daily living, and who need to continue to have quality of life, that is their mission.
Rebecca, thank you so much for coming in today. We’re glad to have you here.
REBECCA SHIELDS:
Thank you for asking me. It’s a privilege to be here.
MARGIOTTA:
We want to ask you a whole bunch of questions, and here’s our first we start with this year, and that is what were you doing in 1974?
SHIELDS:
50 years ago, in 1974, I was actually a young college student at a small community college in southeastern Colorado, where I had decided to try my wings of independence, and start there. And it was my first year, and I was there to get a degree in liberal arts. It was a two-year school. But more than that, I was there to find myself and to know who I am and what I could do, because I wasn’t sure of that. And that’s how it all started. So I was only 19. So it was my first year at this small community college, and I had been away from home all my life from my parents. But yet, not anything like this. So, I was very timid and very frightened, but I knew that I had to pursue my independence in order for me to become an adult, that I wanted to contribute to my community. So, I was the only blind or visually impaired, you might say, person, not only in the small college, but in the whole little town of 10,000 people. There wasn’t anyone else that I knew that was visually impaired. So people were a little alarmed when I showed up and decided to go to school there.
MARGIOTTA:
Well, I think that that was. Partially your beginning of all of this and you now have a masters. Don’t you?
SHIELDS:
I do. After graduation there and life changed and I didn’t have another opportunity to continue education until I went on in 1986 and started my undergraduate degree at University of Colorado, UCCS, and I graduated from there in ’89, and again life pushed me forward and many things happened and I couldn’t go back to school. I had thought about it, but it wasn’t possible. And then when the door opened for me to do it and I made a big decision to do it in 2004, I decided to go back and I started a program at University of Phoenix and was determined to finish with a graduate degree of mental health.
MARGIOTTA:
Were they were receptive to you at that time?
SHIELDS:
I have to say that, actually, people were more accepting to me and believed in me more at the community college than anything I’d ever experienced. And then when I started at UCCS, actually it was a very good experience. The staff there, they were very kind to me and very accommodating. I only had one instructor that once said to me, when I approached him about accommodations for a class, and it was a psychology class of all things, and he said to me, he said, well, I have a lot of students and none of them expect more than I can give. And you’re not going to get it either. So, he was quite rude. And I wasn’t asking him for anything other than an accommodation of when he was talking at that time to in the class to, while he is writing on the board, to also explain verbally what he was saying. That was my accommodation and he was very angry about that. So, that was the only really negative experience I had at UCCS, and for all the people I met and all the instructors I have, that was a small deal. Then I went to University of Phoenix, years later when things should have improved. But it was even worse than anything I’d ever experienced. And it wasn’t so much the instructors, as it was the people who were in the program with me, who were getting a degree in mental health, and they were the ones that showed their real colors. And here they are, getting a degree in mental health, but their acceptance to me, as an individual who happened to have an outward disability, was very negative. And so I look back on that and think, my goodness, if they’re going into mental health, they need some help themselves first.
MARGIOTTA:
Well, that’s what they say. People are in that field, social work, psychology, sometimes we are needing to work on ourselves. It’s hard. I think you’re an exceptional person and I say that as someone who knows you outside of the podcast, exceptional, and you’ve been brave and worked through more things than many people I know. So, I don’t think of you as having a disability, I just think of it, a wonderful different ability. And so that’s my two cents here. But let’s get to some of these questions. When did you first discover that older individuals needed help in their daily lives?
SHIELDS:
I think the first experience I had with that was when I was in middle school. And at the Deaf and Blind School, they always wanted us to be sure that we were aware of what we could do, not what someone could do for us. So they opened up a program with the American Red Cross and a lady who was a native of Colorado Springs, and worked for the Red Cross, was willing to volunteer her time and come to the school and give classes on geriatric care. So those of us who we thought we were interested in taking the class, and I had grandparents that either had passed on or were ready to pass on during my middle school years, and I knew that they had illness and that they didn’t get all the services they need. But I had no clue what what person would do to get those services.
So we took classes and became what you might call the candy striper, Red Cross volunteers. We had uniforms just like everybody else. We had rules and hours and hours of orientation, and then they paired us up with other sighted middle school and high school peers. And we went to nursing homes every Saturday for two hours and visited with all of the folks in these different nursing homes around Colorado Springs. There were about 25 of us, and they brought in the other peers to work with us and go along with us, and they were our age and we had a lot in common with them. So we would visit, some of us, two to four of us in one home, like Colonial Columns and Pikes Peak Manor were some of the biggest homes, and so we spend our time there visiting and we read stories to the clients and some of the students would play the piano and sing for the clients in the big room. And they loved it. And I’d never been to nursing homes, or what we call assistant livings today. But I realized that these people live there and that someone comes in around the clock and takes care of them. And it was quite an eye opener to see what they needed, and yet how lonely they were and how isolated they were.
MARGIOTTA:
It can be a very lonely experience for folks, can’t it?
SHIELDS:
Yes. And I think that, you know, we sat and listened to their stories, and I can still remember some of the things that they told us about their lives and their careers and their travel. And I was fascinated at how these people could remember all this. And yet I hadn’t really gotten to the point where I knew that someday my own parents would be their age, and then someday I would be, and I would have grandchildren, and that was way in the future. And I had no concept of that. In my reality, I mean, I’m sure I knew that that could happen, but I didn’t think about it. I was young. And I just saw these people sitting around in these wheelchairs and needing attention, and at times it was heartbreaking. But yet the orientation taught us don’t feel sorry for them. Be glad you’re there to help them and offer them what you can. And that’s what we did.
MARGIOTTA:
Can you remember a specific person that lived there that really influenced you somehow?
SHIELDS:
I think probably, yeah, I do remember one lady at Colonial Columns, and she had what we at that time called emphysema. Now we I think we call it COPD. And she had smoked a lot in her life and she still craved her cigarettes even as she was a patient there with oxygen. And she told us about her life, and she had been a nurse and she had been in the Army and she was, you know, a strong willed lady, and she had taken care of people. And she told about how her son would come and visit her once or twice a month, and how, you know, she enjoyed that, and she missed him so much, and a little bit about her life in Colorado. She wasn’t a native, I think she’d come here from another state. And, I guess I remember her being able to talk all about that. And then one day we went back and we found out she was, she was gone.
Another man, this is probably more influential than even that, another man in the same home, and I used to visit with him a lot, and he must have been in his late 80s. So you know, he was in a wheelchair. And one day I went in and my peer gal was with me, we talked to him and he said to me, he said, you know, you and I have something in common. And I said, OK. And he, you know, I was, I was real timid, I just really didn’t know what always to say. But we listened a lot and he said, you don’t see with your eyes and he said, but I don’t walk with my legs either, he said. My legs were gone in the war, and he said and now I don’t have them. But I’m like you. I’ll always do what I can for somebody.
MARGIOTTA:
Ohh.
SHIELDS:
And I never forgot that because he, I guess, felt like I could identify with him and he was trying to identify with me, with what he faced every day with his limitations.
MARGIOTTA:
Right. What an amazing story. Thank you. And then another question, where did you work? I know you volunteered at this point, but where did you work, that helped mold your experience with individuals who received services in their homes?
SHIELDS:
Well, it was a long time after the situation of volunteering. So in 1985, I was hired for a service called Atlantis Community. They still exist in Denver. But we had a branch of the organization here in Colorado Springs for a few years into the early 90s. And then I think they disbanded and all went back to Denver, but they still exist. And I was hired as the liaison to the visually impaired for all of El Paso County. And I had two small children and was at that point a single parent, and I needed a job, and so I applied, and they hired me right away. And they were functioning on basically a grant that was given to the Denver headquarters of Atlantis, and then it filtered down to the Colorado Springs situation. And we were located in the building over off of Robinson Street where many, many years ago, the Pikes Peak Community College was in that same building.
So from my home I had to take city transit, which at that time there was absolutely no paratransit and no way to get around except for quote city buses. So every day I had to take a bus to get my daughter to daycare, had to make sure my other older child got to elementary school, and then I took a bus and went to work. And it took four buses for me to get from my home to this location. And Atlantis community was an organization that was beginning to really become very adamant about people with disabilities, independence. And this is before ADA came into law. And so their push for people to have the same rights and the same opportunities, as we use the word typical people today, was strong. But the man who was the assistant director under the supervisor and was my boss, was a gentleman who in the early 80s was a, I believe, a construction worker, and he was on a cherry picker. And he fell close to, you know, 50 feet or more, I don’t remember the exact number. But he fell from the cherry picker. And they thought he was everything but dead. I mean, he broke many, many bones, and he broke, you know, he severed his spine. And it was a horrible accident. And they didn’t think he would live. At the time he had just married, before that, a young woman, and they, you know, lived happily in Colorado Springs. But when this happened and she found out that he was going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life and have lots of physical needs, she left the scene. She wanted no part of it. But this gentleman, even though he was in a wheelchair and couldn’t do much for himself physically, he had recovered from the accident enough that he could talk. You know, his mind was sharp. He was able to drive a van with just using hand controls, of course he had no control of his legs, and he was paralyzed from really, you know, waist down. And he had a caretaker in his home that came and helped him with his physical needs. And he called her an attendant. And that was my first eye opener to really what people need and Atlantis was very concerned about this, and they did this, they worked to get people attendants in their home. Well, they moved on from that and they became very verbal about getting people transportation and getting on buses with wheelchair ramps and being able to cross streets and get into buildings and get into restrooms. And so there was an organization called ADAPT and they banded together, like in 1985 sometime in there, they actually went to California and they blocked the highway, Los Angeles huge highway, and had wheelchairs up and down the highway to the point where people couldn’t cross. And they were protesting that people with disabilities needed buses, trains, subways, and they were adamant about it. Well, it didn’t happen really into law till 1990. But George was a man of little words. But when it came to what he had to say, they were powerful and he would, he stood out in my mind always, because I knew if he could do it, anybody could do it. And he did everything he could for himself.
MARGIOTTA:
Very independent. You’ve told me about him in the past.
SHIELDS:
Actually you can go to a website. It’s called Colorado Gang 19, I believe, is the web online and you can see for yourself what these people did and how they fought for low income housing, for people to have what they need and they couldn’t be turned away because of their disabilities.
MARGIOTTA:
We’ve come a long way since the early 70s, haven’t we?
SHIELDS:
We have a long ways to go.
MARGIOTTA:
We have a long way to go. And you and I and many other people are fighting that fight, yes.
SHIELDS:
Yes. And I don’t think that we should believe that we’ve come so far that we have to accept what we have now and not fight for more. And as we see changes in our country and in our world and our state and our city, we have to continuously fight for what we need. It’s not over.
MARGIOTTA:
It’s not over. So that’s part of my next question, I think. Tell me the life experiences that really spoke to you, that our society still has a long way to go to improve services for older folks. And of course, with folks who have disabilities.
SHIELDS:
That’s a really hard question because it has so many variables to it. But I do believe that, even today, people can get around it. Employers, medical people, landlords, education, your neighborhood, they find ways to get around it because it is against the law. But if they can avoid it and they can get around it and don’t have to do it, they don’t want to do it a lot of times. When I was finishing up my graduate degree from University of Phoenix and we had to do an internship. My instructor told me to call lots of places and find out if I could do an internship there that I had to have the hours. And so I did. And I called an agency in this city who is well known. And I said I was a student at University of Phoenix and getting an internship, oh yes, yes, we could really use someone for an internship. We work with young people and I said, well, I’m not so young, but I really need the hours and I want to learn, and my specialty and mental health is grief, and so I felt like your agency would be where I start. Oh yes. Yes, we’d love that. I made an appointment with the individual and took a bus and went to a place I’d never been. Got to the door and it was a situation where doors were all locked. And so I rang the bell and the intercom came on and I said I have an appointment with, and I don’t remember the person’s name, and I said, and I’m here for an interview. Oh yes, yes. And the door clicked and I went in. And here I stand with my white cane and my folder, and a woman comes up to me, she goes, oh, can I help you? And I said, sure. I said I’m Rebecca, and I’m here for an interview with
MARGIOTTA:
Whoever that was.
SHIELDS:
whoever the lady was, and I said, you know, if I have to wait, I’ll be glad to wait if she’s not available. And she goes oh, oh well, let me get her. And a lady came out and she said, oh, who are you? And I said, I’m Rebecca. And she introduced herself. And I said I spoke with you on the phone and oh, oh, yes, yes, OK, well, here, sit down. So I, you know, sat down and she says, yeah, you want to do an internship, right? And I said yes. That’s what we talked about. And you said that you really need someone, we went on. Well, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come back next week? Because I’m not so sure we really need somebody and we, you know, we’ve had some things go on and if you’ll come back next week then we can talk about it. I said why next week? Well, I have to make sure that, you know, we can do this, whatever. So I will return the next week, and she’s like oh, you know, I forgot to tell you, we had other people ahead of you. And we’ve placed somebody else in that position and we don’t need more than one intern. Yeah, they didn’t need me because she was very afraid. That because I didn’t see, that I wasn’t going to be able to do what anybody else could do, which I knew I could. But she was too afraid to give it a try.
MARGIOTTA:
That’s painful.
SHIELDS:
Well, there are many, many situations that people deal with every day that can, you know, leave a feeling of discrimination, a feeling of sometimes it makes you feel like you’re no one. And yet, you know we are. Someone made a comment to me last week about a situation and they said because the job was with people with disabilities, that something that happened was, you know, their fault, and you know what they forgot was the people who were hired just because they had a disability didn’t mean they made the mistakes. Anybody could have made a mistake on a job. You don’t get hired because you have a disability, you get hired because you have the same qualifications as anybody else, or people shouldn’t be hiring you.
MARGIOTTA:
I’ve had people tell me that that’s what DEI is for and they don’t understand that it’s equal rights for all people. It’s not somebody who is incompetent in whatever that job is being hired to do a job. They’re not qualified for.
SHIELDS:
Well, medical people are the same way. Hospitals, doctors. Also, you face situations with sometimes education, housing. I remember years ago, before ADA was our law, and trying to find a house to rent, when you know, I was looking for a house once. He said, well, I don’t know what to do. If you are blind and, you know, I have an electric stove, and if you, what, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, what if you set the house on fire? And I’m like, well, I don’t think I would do that because I’m like anybody else, I know how to use a stove and I use it very carefully, like everybody should.
MARGIOTTA:
Good for you, right?
SHIELDS:
Right.
MARGIOTTA:
Yes. There were times when those of us with differing abilities were not allowed in society.
SHIELDS:
Right.
MARGIOTTA:
And I remember those years well. But, so what prompted you to start your own business, huh? New Vision Professional Services.
SHIELDS:
Well, probably one of the reasons is, is that I was really weary if many bosses I’ve had since I was 16 years old who thought that all the people that worked with me, if they were able bodied people, could do a better job than me. So I was pretty weary of that. And also it, you know, it happens everywhere, and people, it’s a very silent situation. And people don’t want it to be known. But it is there, and the person who has the limitation, or you might call and it is, you know, the disability is the fact that I, you know, I’m not able to see with my eyes, but I certainly have a lot of inner vision. And so I decided if I start my own business and I can help people, then I’ll really enjoy the boss that I work for.
MARGIOTTA:
I like your boss.
SHIELDS:
So do I.
MARGIOTTA:
I’m glad.
SHIELDS:
But beyond that, I really had a very deep compassion and a very deep concern for the people that I serve, that they aren’t getting what they need from this community, sometimes from the state and sometimes above that. And so I wanted to be a small dot in the system that might just help people have a way to feel like their needs are being met, or their concerns in life are going to be tended to. Lots of people start losing vision in late life. Some macular degeneration hits people. It can hit at any age, but we see a lot of it in people over 60. There’s a lot of other eye conditions that happen and sometimes people don’t even know they had a genetic condition, or something that can happen as they’re a young adult. But then there’s the one that happens due to an accident, and it can happen to anyone.
The one thing we have to remember about disabilities is that it has no concern about, you know, who you are, what color you are, what how old you are, what your genetics are, anything. It comes when it wants and it happens to anybody. And so sometimes people forget that they think, oh I’m able bodied and I’m so lucky and whatever, it can happen to anybody tomorrow.
So I worked a hotline, a crisis line, for an organization for the blind and visually impaired. And I ran the hotline statewide. And people call into an 800 number, and ask questions and for resources, and I did that for five years. And during the time I was doing that was, when I was even getting my undergrad and my graduate degree and clear back in 2004, but beyond that, before that, I worked this hotline. And I got calls from people who were so desperate, and who had so many different needs, and their walks of life were so moving. And I thought, oh my golly, these people have got to have more than this and I’m not doing enough. And it really troubled me. So then when I got my graduate degree and I had my credentials, I said I can do more. I want to have my own place, my own office, where I can reach out to people and give them a little, just a taste, of what might carry them through, o they’re not isolated, they’re not lonely.
So I began searching and got busy and did my credentials as far as having a license for, you know your business license and registering with Secretary of State, and everything you have to do like everybody else. Things just fell into place and it was like it was meant to be. Not only since I’ve had my business since 2008, but when I go back to all the people I’ve worked with. And I’ve sort of taken kind of a counting, since, you know, you asked me to do this podcast, and I’ve done another podcast for another organization, and I thought, I I just need to know a little bit about how many people have I really worked with and had contact with and maybe not done a complete overall with them and maybe they’ve moved on or whatever, but you know, I came up with almost about 2,000 people. That since clear back to the late 70s, early 80s, when you know I was still a volunteer someplace or I still did something and I’ve worked with people and tried to help their lives, I think I probably, you know worked with that many people on a one-on-one basis at some point.
MARGIOTTA:
Wow. Go girl. I have a question. I have this one question and I do a survey of people who are caregivers for people with disabilities, differing abilities, and I asked them would you want the one your loved one has or would you want one that your loved one doesn’t have? And frequently what they tell me is anything but the one my loved one has. And talking to your people with the disabilities, have you ever talked to them about, you know, especially if there’s a sudden change in abilities, would they want to know what it was like growing up having that disability and having more knowledge on how to deal with it? Or would they want to continue to have it start it up like in blindness maybe, have glaucoma at the age of 65 and never had any vision problems. Do you see what I’m saying?
SHIELDS:
That’s a big question.
MARGIOTTA:
Yeah.
SHIELDS:
We do a lot of support groups at New Vision. We have an office and we do support groups. We do grief groups. We do groups about change, about end of life. We talk about our daily lives and what we need to do. And I think, because I don’t see the people that I work with feel very safe and they also feel very connected with me.
We want our office to have a unique feeling about it. You walk in and you are there because you belong there. It’s a safety net for you and we never want anyone to feel like they don’t belong there, that there’s something there that they can’t do, that they feel out a place. We don’t want that. That’s why I wanted this to be a place for seniors to come to or, and I serve other people besides seniors who have disabilities, but I want them to come and sit down at a table and have a cup of coffee and play a game of cards, or as you talked about with your podcast with the man from the Senior Center, I want them. If they want to do knitting or crocheting or weaving or they want to, if they can do a little art or whatever, we’ll provide that. But I want them to do it as they can do it, not a whole table full of people, and then they feel like they aren’t able to do what other people. I want them to feel able bodied and that they it’s on their level.
So, I have asked that question back to your question. I’ve asked them and they have different answers. Most people who have lost vision late in life or lost vision due to something else, and they’re not even a senior, are very just very grateful that they once could see and that they had that opportunity. However, they do say to me sometimes, I wish I had all the knowledge that you have and all the confidence that you have in yourself. When you deal with a vision loss or being not able to see, I wish I had that, and how do you get that? And they don’t have that yet when it’s happened late in life or suddenly. I mean it takes a lots of time and I explained to him, I haven’t always had it, but it comes with time. So you know, it’s a catch 22, I guess.
MARGIOTTA:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So let’s get back to New Vision Professional Services. Give us more information about what kind of services you offer there.
SHIELDS:
Well, we’ve had a rough two years. We were asked to leave the complex so the Senior Center could be rebuilt. So we were one of the businesses that out of many that were relocated out of there. So the last two years have been very difficult for us. But we have prevailed and we’ve made it through and we now have a very lovely location, a lovely space. We had it refurbished from top to bottom and we’re very proud of it. We have classes, and we all do everything on an individual level. So someone calls and says if they need help, I do an intake on them and I find out what their goals are. If they are no longer able to read print and have a real need to want to have a marking system and want to know phone numbers and addresses and really want to still be able to read and write for themselves, then it’s time for them to learn some Braille, so we have Braille classes. We have classes in daily living as cooking and organizational skills, cleaning skills. We help with, you know, people knowing how to keep track of their finances as far as, like, how to do it without seeing, you know, the checkbook or whatever. We teach them different ways we teach them to adapt to a different way of doing it, but they still have quality of life, so someone doesn’t have to do it for them. And we teach orientation mobility, which we have a licensed teacher who teaches people how to travel with a white cane, how to cross busy streets, take paratransit or city transit. So, you know, she’s very qualified and is a wonderful instructor, and so people really benefit from what she does. So we’re a small staff, but I feel like we’re a mighty staff.
MARGIOTTA:
You are mighty. Yes. And what do you believe other organizations can get from your organization? Or how can your organization help their organizations?
SHIELDS:
So I believe in collaboration. So I think organizations should collaborate together if they can and I try very hard to do that. I collaborate with agencies that already, perhaps, serve individuals who might be visually impaired. For example, there’s Low Vision Services of Colorado. And a doctor is there to help people with magnification, and he and I connect a lot. He makes a lot of referrals to me and I make them to him. I try to work with other eye clinics. I work with Department of Human Services, both for Adult Protective Services and Child Protective Services if needed. I’ve really worked hard to have a connection with some of the agencies that work through area on aging. I work closely with area on aging also and I’ve worked with Social Security, with Medicare, and just all of them, try to let them know who New Vision Professional Services is and that we’re there to support them. Maybe they have a client they don’t know how to help them because the person may not be able to have access to the written material or something like that. So I think there is a gap and a lot of agencies don’t know anything about it. And you can tell someone over and over, but if they don’t make referrals or they don’t connect with me, I can’t help the people they serve. And they serve thousands of people, day in and day out. And we if we work together, then people can get their needs met in a well-rounded way.
MARGIOTTA:
So here’s our last question. How do you think this podcast can be of help to our seniors and others in the community?
SHIELDS:
Well, I hope that someone who hears this podcast, and they believe that they could help even New Vision or help other services that have been on the podcast with other entities, that they would jot it down and they would participate in helping people who are with these agencies who work really hard to get the needs of people met. So, for example, if people who are listening, and I’ll use my own agency as an example, if you know of someone in your life who was blind or visually impaired and either they’ve passed on or they’re still in your world, they’re a good friend, but you don’t know how to help them, you can make a referral, you can ask them if you can make a referral. Sometimes when people pass on, I have several volunteers that say, I want to continue helping. I have one volunteer. Her parents were blind and she said to me the other day, she said, helping you makes me think of my mother and makes me feel like a part of her is still with me when I help you. And that was a real compliment to me.
So I think agencies or anyone out there, if you want to want to help New Vision, certainly get a hold of us and we can make suggestions, but we do need a lot of help from our community just like we want to help our community. We don’t survive, we have to pay the utilities and we have to pay our insurance, so anytime anybody doesn’t know what else to do and they’d like to make a donation, they can certainly do that to New Vision, and it goes to the services of our people, it goes to help people who can’t see a regular watch and we buy a talking watch for them or a talking clock, and that may be a small thing, but it’s a big thing in their life.
MARGIOTTA:
Oh, knowing the time is very helpful to people. Yes, so they can donate. They can volunteer as well?
SHIELDS:
Yes. Or they can, you know, if they know people and they can tell them about. They can pass the word on. There is no better way to get the word out than the word of mouth.
MARGIOTTA:
No better way. No better way. So with that, I want to give everyone a way to connect with you. So I hope you all have your pencils. Here is the contact for Rebecca at New Vision Professionals. First her phone number there is 719-635-8996. That’s 719-635-8996. Their address now is at 1817 N Union, Suite D it’s facing Union Street. It’s on the East side of the street, And then their website is New Vision For You and I will spell that N-E-W-V-I-S-I-O-N and the number four and then Y-O-U-DOT-com. Thank you so much, Rebecca and New Vision Professionals. It was really nice to have you with us today.
SHIELDS:
Thank you for asking me and I look forward to hearing from anyone out there who would benefit from our services.
MARGIOTTA:
Thank you.