In addition to helping clients buy and sell homes across the Washington, DC metro area and hosting a weekly radio show on WMAL, Eric Stewart recently founded Widow Care, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. The mission of Widow Care is to provide desperately needed support services to widows and widowers dealing with the loss of a spouse so they can become empowered to carry on with their lives.
On a recent segment of Eric’s radio show, he spoke with Tamara Blake, Executive Director of Widow Care, about the benefits of joining, volunteering or donating to Widow Care; upcoming events; and the Widow Care 100 campaign.
Below is an excerpt from their discussion:
Eric: Good morning, Tamara. What are the top 3 benefits of Widow Care?
Tamara: The top 3 benefits of Widow Care could really be described with our 3 programs. The first would be our volunteer program. We connect volunteers to individuals in the community who have been widowed. Whatever it is that they may need help doing, such as help with paperwork, financial counseling, assistance with yard work and other organizational systems within the homes, we provide a volunteer to assist that person who has been widowed.
The second would most certainly be our Widow Care Connection, where we connect people who have been widowed with other individuals who have been widowed. This provides that sense of support, strength, and connection with people who really understand the experience, whether it's 2 months or 17 years removed from the loss.
Our third program would be our educational series where we have one of our society members come in and give a seminar on either downsizing your home or financial counseling or assistance with "which paperwork should I keep and which paperwork needs to be shredded?" Those are the top 3 benefits of Widow Care.
Eric: A widow wants to become involved or wants to find out how to apply to get the benefits, how does that happen?
Tamara: A widow should go onto www.widowcare.org and there's an application right there. They can also e-mail me, tamara@widowcare.org, and I will make sure to get the application right out to that individual.
Eric: I love the online access of information that widowcare.org provides, but not everybody has the Internet at home or even a computer. If that's the case, could someone call you?
Tamara: Absolutely. Our phone number at Widow Care is 1-301-917-4741.
Eric: What's the next step?
Tamara: I would help connect them to whatever it is the individual needs. We also have a couple of interns on our team right now, and they're operating as care drivers, so they serve as a really nice liaison between the volunteers and our members who have been widowed. There are other events coming up as well, so we would also connect them with one of those.
Eric: Great. Suppose someone wants resources, maybe some kind of service that they need around the house, do you all provide that too?
Tamara: We do. We do provide that recommendation, and if you wanted to go on our website, again, that's widowcare.org, we do have some resources there. You can also contact us for more specific and individualized needs.
Eric: Suppose a business owner is listening today and has a heart for widows too, wants to become involved in some fashion with underwriting or supporting Widow Care, maybe even sponsoring an event like our 5K coming up in late October, would they reach out to you the same way?
Tamara: They would reach out to me the same way at tamara@widowcare.org or call me. Again, that phone number is 301-917-4741. We are always looking for sponsors and society members. Our society members are the ones that we have to come in and speak to our members in our educational series. We also welcome sponsors, and you brought up the 5K, which is October 17. That's a fantastic way for a business owner to get involved, get their logo on the back of our T-shirt, and have a lot of visibility there.
Eric: There is an event coming up on July 20 for Widow Care members and it will be about downsizing. What I speak about here on the show regularly, I'll be sharing through my entire rightsizing seminar, giving out free copies of the Rightsizing Guide at that event. We do want to invite you to participate. If you're listening and think, "Gosh, yeah, I really do need to get rid of some of my stuff and I'd like to know how to do that better," please contact Tamara at tamara@widowcare.org or you can call her, again, at that 301-917-4741 number and RSVP for that. We'll have some treats there for you for coming out to that event.
Tamara: Oh, definitely.
Eric: This is not exclusive to just widows; this is for widows and widowers. We want to provide the educational support that you might need, volunteer support, perhaps even just the social networking that would also be beneficial. Recently, we had an event at La Madeleine, where we had a host of widowers come, and we are looking forward to having many more. If you have been widowed or are a widower and you have perhaps already formed a group, maybe even already have a connection of 15, 20 people that are getting together, please get in touch with Widow Care. We would love to try to connect with you as well and see how we can find a cohesive way to work together, to care for each other at widowcare.org.
All right. Tamara, before you go, tell us just a couple of quick things about what the rest of the year holds for Widow Care.
Tamara: We have a really great new way to get involved. We're announcing our next campaign, which is called Widow Care 100, and this is really exciting because we are attempting to engage 100 donors to donate $100.00. This is beneficial to our members and to Widow Care so that we can continue the educational series, the volunteer program, the social support and connections to the community for our members. You can find us on all social media on hashtag #widowcare100.
Eric: A hundred donors, $100.00 each, a great way to participate and a substantial and meaningful way to support Widow Care for this next season. Plus, actually, if you own a business involved in the Internet, perhaps web design and so on, we're going to be going into web design development for Widow Care, and we invite you to contact us with your business about that. You can contact Tamara directly at tamara@widowcare.org.
Great. Tamara, thanks for being on the show today.
Tamara: Thank you so much for having me, Eric.
To listen to Eric and Tamara’s full interview, click here.
For more information on Widow Care, please visit www.widowcare.org or call 301-917-4741. For more information on buying and selling and everything in between, listen to The Eric Stewart Show every Sunday from 7am-8am on WMAL AM 630 or 105.9 FM. If you miss a show don’t fret! You can access the archived shows here.
