The role of caregiver can take you by surprise. Things will suddenly happen to a loved one – when you least expect it.

While it will shock the system – and it will – there are things adults of any age can do to be ready when that difficult day comes. Our parents and grandparents are vulnerable – both through the COVID-19 pandemic – and when we come out on the other side of #COVID19.

Led by volunteers with multifamily executive experience Kimberly D. Scott, Diana Benitez, Sam Gainous, Jeff Duerstock, Brian Crawford and a handful of sponsors have made is their mission to provide resources, education and financial assistance for caregivers in need, through their 501c3 non-profit #DoAsWeDoFoundation launch in March.

Each Thursday at 6 p.m. CST the team brings a Livestream to LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube (called DoAsWeDoLIVE) where they chat with a guest to learn from their experiences ranging from healthcare, emotional support, financial planning, elder law and the power of goodwill gestures.
These invaluable live streams are recorded and available through multiple social platforms - click #DoAsWeDo to pick the platform. Past guests included Melissa Foley, former multifamily marketing executive, who suffered an aortic dissection at age 42 while visiting the US from her home in South Africa. She discussed how she was nursed back to health by a group of volunteers, #caregivers, from the apartment industry. It took nine months? Foley is now 44 and promoting and supporting socially ethical and environmentally sustainable tourism in Africa.

Scott (former CEO/Founder of Capture the Market) and Benitez (RealPage); this Thursday, July 2 will interview Scott’s niece, Samantha Scott, a 21-year-old student at Texas A&M who had to fill in as a caregiver during evenings while home during COVID. She lives with their 94-year-old great grandmother who is cared for by Scott’s brother- and sister-in-law.

The Do As We Do volunteers are eager to hear from other caregivers and healthcare/senior care experts who would like to be guests on the show. Visit DoAsWeDo.org to learn more.

“The main goal is to open the door to conversations about this tough reality that nobody wants to talk about,” Scott says. “So often, we hear of people who never plan for this. And it is not about if you DIE, it is about if you LIVE, do you have a plan or have you had a conversation with your family or loved one. We want to be a resource. There’s no shame in this. Plenty of stress, yes, but we’re here to help.”

Do As We Do accepts donations and has received more than $3,465 to date, but it needs more to help more caregivers that were already in need prior to COVID-19.

For starters, round-the-clock in-home care cost: about $180,000 a year; $80,000 a year to live in a nursing home; and $43,000 a year for assisted living. Scott says the fundraising will help to support rental housing residents who are caregivers, should they fall on difficult financial circumstances.

“Many have to work off-hours at lower-paying jobs or take on two jobs to help their loved ones so they can be home to care for loved ones during times of need,” Scott says.

Do As We Do and this #CaregivingCrisis will continue well beyond Covid-19, Scott says. Since 2011, every day 10,000 people turn 65 and 40 million Americans are doing selfless work by serving as an unpaid family caregiver for a loved one.

Some 25 percent of those caregivers are Millennials, who often feel forced to choose between their careers and caring for their aging parents and grandparents.

“We are tackling a problem no one wants to talk about,” Gainous says. “And that problem of unpaid caregiving is never going to fully go away. Our foundation will continue to provide education, awareness, resources, and financial support far beyond Covid.”

For the past year, Scott self-funded a podcast (audio) about Caregivers called #caregiversstories and learned that there are more people out there who are just like her.
Scott is a part-time long-distance caregiver whose mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2012 when she was 65.

“Every time I released an episode, the feedback I get from my friends, colleagues, and strangers that reach out to me to tell me they are or have, gone through, something similar.”

Scott said after watching the Ways & Means Committee about Elderly Care on CSPAN (Nov. 14, 2019), she began to document her story to create a documentary series on caregiver struggles to build awareness, educate and brand a charity that is giving services to caregivers who are unpaid. The first series is called #NoRegrets, Kimberly’s Caregiver Story.

Then March 18, she decided to self-fund, Do As We Do Foundation in the case larger corporations that might want to become donors now, instead of later.

This non-profit is a “100% Model,” where private donors fund our operating costs and 100 percent of the donations will go straight to the caregivers in need of services and assistance.
Posting each story to YouTube and sharing snips of each on all other channels to cross-promote and build awareness for Generation Y and Z so they can be proactive and start the tough convo with their parents.

Hence the importance of multi-channel distribution to build awareness of the documentary and the nonprofit. We use Facebook. LinkedIn. Instagram. Snapchat. TikTok. YouTube. Twitter. Podcasting. #DoAsWeDo