Four years ago, the Not Forgotten Project started with a simple question: What could older adults do for other older adults who too often go unseen?
Members of the Senior Adult Community Engagement project, or SACE, were thinking about how seniors could use their own voices, experiences and relationships to serve the community. The idea that rose to the top was to support nursing homes during the holidays, especially residents who rely on Medicaid and may not have family or friends visiting regularly.
“We don’t hear a lot about them,” said Jeannette Anderson, a SACE Ambassador who has been involved since the project began. “But for the grace of God, go I. We embraced the project, and it’s been a blessing.”
The spark that lit the flame
The first year, SACE volunteers gathered enough donations to deliver about 150 gift bags to nursing home residents. They filled the bags with practical items—socks, T-shirts, personal care products, blankets and other comforts—and delivered them around Christmas, a time when loneliness can feel especially heavy.
Since then, the project has grown. Last year, volunteers delivered roughly 250 bags to residents in Rochester nursing homes. Media coverage helped bring more attention to the effort and showed the wider community what SACE members already knew: a gift bag can be much more than a gift bag. It can be a message.
“You can see that when they take the gifts, they are so excited because somebody remembered them,” Anderson said. “I see you. That’s the big thing. I see you. You’re a person. You’re valuable. You lived your whole life and now you ended up here, but that’s not the end of your story.”
The project’s name—Not Forgotten—came from that same belief.
Phyllis Jackson, community wellness project manager for the Combined Entity of Common Ground Health-Finger Lakes Performing Provider System-Rochester RHIO and founder of the SACE project, said many people do not realize how little is provided for residents whose long-term nursing home care is covered by Medicaid.
Filling a needed gap
“Most people don’t know that Medicaid provides a bed, linens, a gown, medicine, and that’s it,” Jackson said. “Anything over and above—some personal care items, things that make them more comfortable and feel less alone—that’s the family’s responsibility.”
For residents without family nearby, those extras can be hard to come by. That is why SACE collects items nursing homes often cannot provide in abundance: deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs, brushes, socks, footies, T-shirts, lap blankets, bed throws, fleece jackets, hoodies and stuffed animals.
“These are specific things that are utilized a lot and very needed for those in long-term care,” Jackson said. “Older adults tend to get cold. Gowns are thin. Having T-shirts underneath their gowns, having lap robes or bed throws, not only does it add warmth, but it’s personalized. They’re colorful. They add joy.”
The need also does not end when the holidays are over.
That is why this year, SACE is launching its first full Christmas in July effort—a midyear push to replenish supplies for residents now while also beginning to prepare for December.
“The things we give them don’t last a whole year,” Jackson said. “By the time mid-summer comes, they’re all gone.”
Christmas in July will run throughout the month, giving individuals, churches, youth groups, employee teams and community organizations a chance to donate comfort items now. Some donations may be distributed immediately to residents who need them, while others will help SACE build toward the larger holiday effort later this year.
The project currently reaches several nursing homes in the city, places Jackson said often serve residents who are older, isolated, living on Medicaid and disproportionately from marginalized communities.
“We’re doing nursing homes that people may look at and not have the best impression of,” Jackson said. “They tend to have a high population of marginalized older adults, Black, Indigenous, and people of color that have aged out and are alone. So that’s the target population we’re serving.”
The scale of that need is significant.
Nationally, Medicaid is the primary payer for more than six of ten nursing facility residents, according to KFF. That statistic tracks for New York, with Medicaid paying for the care of about 64% of nursing home residents, according to a 2025 Georgetown University Center for Children and Families fact sheet. In Rochester, there are 23 Medicare-certified nursing homes with more than 4,000 certified beds, according to NursingHomeData.org. While precise county-level counts of Medicaid-funded nursing home residents are not easily available through public sources, statewide figures suggest that thousands of nursing home residents in the Rochester and Finger Lakes region rely on Medicaid for their care.
For Jackson, those numbers represent people whose lives still hold memory, wisdom and value.
“One of the greatest gifts we have been given as human beings is the gift of memory,” she said. “It may be hard to retrieve for some older adults, but there are many memories that don’t fade. Most life lessons don’t fade.”
Intergenerational touchpoints throughout the year
The Not Forgotten spirit is felt far beyond Christmas. Throughout the year, volunteers send greeting cards for holidays including Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. When there is a gap between holidays, they send “thinking of you” cards.
“They look forward to it,” Anderson said. “It’s an all-year process. It’s not just one holiday. We try to keep in touch with them.”
That steady presence is part of what makes the project meaningful. Anderson, who also leads Bible study at the Pearl Nursing Home, said she has seen residents change when they know someone will keep coming back.
“I didn’t anticipate being this invested in the program,” she said. “But you get very invested in seeing people blossom. When you come back, their eyes start to sparkle. They look forward to seeing you.”
The effort has also become intergenerational. As WXXI reported in December, teens from the Rochester City School District’s Restorative H.U.B. program helped SACE volunteers assemble and deliver gift bags, joining a growing circle of young people—including from the Community Place youth program and Abundant Life Faith Ministry’s youth group—churches, senior groups and community partners who contribute to the effort.
Jackson said those intergenerational connections are important for residents and for young people.
“Young people need to see older adults that are in nursing homes,” she said. “Someday their parent or grandparent—or themselves if they live long enough—that may be their end. We need to help our young folks understand that if we live long enough, this may be where we end.”
Anderson said the presence of young people can be especially powerful.
“The young people that come in, that blesses them too,” she said. “Because you want to come see me? Yeah, I want to see you.”
Community support has helped the project expand. Jackson said WXXI has been a consistent partner, and last year SACE invited employers, churches and organizations to adopt a nursing home by collecting items at their workplace, then help pack and deliver bags. Some groups make cards. Others crochet blankets. A small group of women at Hulda Park apartment homes in Irondequoit, Anderson said, has become a powerhouse.
Still, Jackson is clear that the need will always exceed what SACE can provide.
Small acts that carry deep meaning
“It is always more need than we’re able to meet,” she said. “The ideal, the vision, is to meet every need. The mission is to do what we can, with what we have.”
That mission matters even more because not every resident has someone nearby to advocate for them. Families may live far away. Friends may have died. Caregivers may be overwhelmed. Some residents may have no regular visitors at all.
“It’s not always that they don’t have family,” Jackson said. “A lot of it is that they don’t have family local. Things have changed. Jobs go everywhere. People move.”
For that reason, Not Forgotten is both practical and relational. The donated items provide warmth, comfort and dignity. The visits, cards and familiar faces offer connection. Together, they remind residents that their lives still matter.
“We’re still who we are,” Jackson said. “The body that’s encasing this spirit, well, the house is getting old and rickety. But the spirit remains vital and alive.”
Christmas in July is an invitation to help keep that spirit connected all year long.
“We need people to partner,” Anderson said. “They must remember one day they’re going to get old. They don’t know where they’re going to be. So, we’re paying it forward by helping and just making them feel like they’re still valuable.”
Four years after the first 150 bags were delivered, the Not Forgotten Project has become more than a holiday collection. It is a year-round reminder that aging does not erase a person’s worth, and that small acts of care can carry deep meaning.
Or, as Anderson put it: “Somebody remembered them.”