Strengthening Our Community: Stoughton Area Senior Center

In recent years Dairyland has cultivated an important relationship with the Stoughton Area Senior Center (SASC). The SASC—located just a few miles down the road from Dairyland’s headquarters—provides a variety of programs, services, and opportunities for community members over 55 years of age. Like many other service organizations, the SASC relies on volunteers to meet the needs of the community they serve, and offer a variety of volunteer opportunities for both individuals and groups. Dairyland employees have participated in two of these opportunities: weekly meal delivery and seasonal yard maintenance. 

As part of Dairyland’s Live Engaged initiative, employees are encouraged—and paid—to participate in volunteer opportunities during work hours. Employees are given up to two hours per month to use when their schedules allow it.

For the past two years, Ken Schuh, Dairyland’s Operations Manager, has used his volunteer time to pull together a team each spring and fall to perform yard maintenance and clean up for senior citizens and people with disabilities in the Stoughton area.

“Our partnership with the Stoughton Area Senior Center provides a safe, simple and tangible way for employees to meet the needs of others, expecting nothing in return,” said Ken. “It’s introducing employees to an opportunity for Living Engaged right now and may grease the skids for doing so in different and fresh ways in the future.”

Sandy and her father volunteering during Live Engaged Volunteer Day 2021

Another member of Dairyland’s team, Sandy Paton, has been volunteering with her father through the SASC for the last three years, providing Meals on Wheels deliveries.

“We are delivering healthy meals to senior citizens who are unable to leave their homes due to illness or who don’t have other resources for purchasing food,” Sandy noted. “I’ve heard from the coordinator at the Senior Center that for some people, this is their only meal of the day.” 

Both services are vital to individuals in the area who are lacking resources that many take for granted.

“It’s local, simple, and practical. If not me, who? I have awareness and the ability to do this work, where others may not. I’m simply being a good steward of what I’ve been given,” said Ken on his involvement with the SASC and inclusion of other Dairyland employees. 

It’s very important to me to give back to Stoughton. Without volunteers, many services that members of the community depend on wouldn’t be so readily available.
— Sandy Paton, Dairyland Executive Assistant

Strengthen your community is one of the four pillars of Dairyland’s Live Engaged initiative, and both Ken and Sandy are exemplars of this principle.