Joanne Hickox
Jacksonville, Florida
How is your Hero working to make the world a better place?
Joanne Hickox's Seniors on a Mission exists to love and encourage live-at-home senior citizens. She believes that senior citizens are valuable members of our community, who can derive special meaning by giving of their time. Her organization utilizes team oriented, community service as their vehicle, enabling seniors to be an appreciated part of our community. Several times a week, mission trips create an atmosphere where seniors' needs will be met, they will be fulfilled and have fun. Seniors on a Mission is a win-win-win situation for all involved and generous living is the center of it all. Senior citizens give of their time to nonprofits, younger people give of their time to cook for and bless the seniors, and the nonprofit organizations are able to reach out to more needy people because of the budget relief the seniors give them through the work of their hands and their hearts. Last year Seniors on a Mission, through their 131 organized mission trips, helped reduce the budget of 26 different local nonprofit organizations by supplying over 12,500 hours of supervised, quality controlled, volunteer service. The dollar value of donated service each year exceeds the cost of our program. Her seniors donated just over $250,000 in service in 2010. In the work they did for Jacksonville's nonprofit organizations, the 350 plus seniors actively involved in our program touched the lives of over a half a million of the neediest citizens in northeast Florida.
How has your Hero impacted your life and inspired you?
Joanne Hickox truly loves senior citizens. The remarkable and highly decorated organization she founded, as a young woman almost 10 years ago, Seniors on a Mission, has never been a "job" for her . . . it is her life's calling. She is filled with the joyful love and care she pours into her organization and it radiates in all those around her. As I witness the countless lives she reaches out to, touches and transforms on a daily basis, she a constant and continual source of loving inspiration to me.