Anny Shan, Boston College PULSE Volunteer
At Little Brothers- Friends of the Elderly, we have a Highlight of the Week series where we shine a spotlight on members of the LBFE community including board members, older adults, volunteers, students, staff, CitySites (and more!) to learn about them and their experiences with LBFE. This week’s highlight is of one of our new Boston College PULSE student volunteers, Anny Shan! Read below to learn more about Anny:
My name is Jun Shan, but I also go by Anny. I am Junior in Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, majoring in Finance and Information System. I am from Shanghai, China and came to the United States seven years ago during my freshmen year of high school. I consider both Shanghai, where I was raised and grew up in, and Scarsdale, New York, where my family lives right now, as my home. I discovered Little Brothers- Friends of the Elderly from PULSE, a yearlong program I am currently enrolled in. PULSE’s mission is to educate students about social injustice by putting them into direct contact with marginalized populations and social change organizations and by encouraging discussion on classic and contemporary works of philosophy and theology. Its goal is to foster critical consciousness and enable students to question conventional wisdom and learn how to work for a just society, and PULSE accomplishes this by helping the students make relevant connections between course material and experience with community service.
I chose LBFE for my placement work because I saw this serious social issue of senior loneliness arising in the past decade. I did not realize the issue until my grandparents came to the United States in my freshmen year of high school to take care of me. I saw how the language barrier disabled them to interact with other people outside of our house and made them feel lonely. By the time I saw LBFE in the book of the placement works, I knew that this service is designed for me. I hope to build friendly relationships with the elders in the weekly CitySite and Friendly Visiting program, and develop leadership skill by planning and managing the weekly activities. My international background gives me the ability to chat with Chinese elders in their native language, so they can feel more comfortable and come to the CitySite more often. I am really excited to meet all the elders in the CitySite and the 1:1 Friendly Visiting weekly. It is an uncommon experience to have conversations with diverse elders and listen to their life stories in the age I have only read from books.
Don’t forget to check out next week’s blog to see who will be highlighted then!
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