On Friday night in NYC, over 800 men and women men made their way to the Upper East Side dressed in black tie, gowns, and masks stunning enough to rival those worn during carnival.
The reason? To attend The Yorkville Ball. The appropriately named annual ball aims to raise funds for Search and Care – an organization whose mission is to seek out older people living in the Yorkville area of NYC, who need help managing life’s daily activities, and provide them the support they need.
Attendees of the Yorkville ball took over 3 floors of The Union Club, a prestigious members only social club founded in 1836. Each room seemed to offer a unique value. One room offered live music and dancing to the tunes of the Peter Duchin Orchestra. Others had rows of items up for silent auction ranging from dinner for two at hotspot Locanda Verde to a trip to Iceland. But all rooms had one thing in common – a top shelf open bar. Luckily, snacks were passed around through out the night to keep the food to drink ratio in check.
Still, the drinks were flowing as swimmingly as the gowns passing through each room.
Charity has never looked so good.
For more information on Search and Care, please visit: http://www.searchandcare.org/
Search and Care is currently 89% privately funded—always a challenge to cultivate each year. Yet, unlike agencies tethered to unpredictable public funding, we’re committed to avoiding such governmental support which often stipulates that each social worker serve 60-65 clients—impeding our capacity to offer home-based, personalized, truly comprehensive care. With private funding and the subsequent ability to maintain caseloads of 45 clients or less, we can avoid a “one size fits all” approach and, instead, care for the older neighbor as a “whole person.” Our individualized care-plans go beyond crisis interventions and “putting out fires.” We identify and immediately address clients’ emerging and future concerns which may impact upon their safe, sustained independence.
