A small group of SUNY Jamestown Community College students recently visited the Pines nursing home in Olean to deliver cookies and spread a little holiday cheer to residents.
“It was the sweetest thing,” said Crystal Fernandez, a member of JCC’s Cattaraugus County Campus Student Senate, who helped take cookies from room to room while chatting with many of the residents.
“I loved it,” she added. “It made me feel good afterward doing something for them.”
JCC students visited the Pines more often before COVID-19 lockdowns and delivered doughnuts during the pandemic. They are planning to make the trip across town more regularly now that it is safer.
“We started going down once a month before COVID and doing an activity with the residents,” said Lisa Yohon, the Cattaraugus County Campus Life director. “I had a copy of their activities calendar. We would pick a day that worked with our activity hour and was an activity that we could be involved with with them.”
Yohon has led many student volunteer efforts over the years, including an annual community cleanup of the city of Olean area surrounding the downtown campus, assisting with the community Thanksgiving dinner hosted by Olean City School District, collecting cans for donations to the SPCA and spending time with the animals there.
The mission of volunteering means a lot to Paula Snyder, the executive director of the Cattaraugus County Campus. A longtime nursing professional, Snyder often accompanies students to the Pines and helped spearhead Remote Area Medical clinics in 2021 and 2023 that supported underserved regional residents.
“Volunteering not only serves our neighbors in and around Olean, it also helps our students gain a clearer picture of their own lives,” Snyder said. “It shows them a lot about persistence, resilience, and making the most of what they have. There is so much that they and we, as JCC, have to offer and give to our community.”
Alexis Sleggs, Student Senate president, said she’s often helped her grandmother with volunteer work through the Rotary and raising money for cancer research in high school.
“Being able to see how that affected all the residents was really nice,” she said of the Pines visit. “Everybody was really happy for us to be there. Not a lot of people get to see that because they’re going on with their own lives and don’t think about volunteer work or these places that we have here in Olean. Being able to have that as an outreach for students is really nice."
Sleggs is transferring to St. Bonaventure University for the spring semester to continue studying psychology, but she plans to keep up with lending a hand with Pines visits.
“They all had a really rewarding experience,” Yohon said. “The students who are returning want to continue going. The ones who are not returning still want to help in some way.”