ITNSarasota, Providing Dignified Transportation for Seniors
By Laura Calderon
Life is a journey. The irony is that much of it actually is spent driving a car. Few of us think, and even fewer plan for, the day when we’ll have to turn in our keys. But each year, more than one million Americans aged 70 and older stop driving and become dependent on others to meet their transportation needs. And their numbers are growing almost as rapidly as the population is aging.
Plan ahead for your future transportation needs.
This is more than a personal problem– it’s a social issue. At the most recent White House Conference on Aging, mobility was ranked the third highest issue for older people–ahead of Social Security and Medicare. Today, people remain active and independent into their eighties and beyond, and outlive their decision to stop driving by as much as a decade. That’s too long to depend on favors, even from family.
Independent Transportation Network® (ITN) allows seniors to maintain their independence and their dignity. With safe transportation, older adults remain vital to the economic and social health of their communities. Mobility empowers them. They stay connected to family, friends and community. Businesses retain their valuable customers, and more importantly, adult children find relief from a daunting and complex problem.
ITN provides rides with door-to-door, arm-through-arm service to thousands of seniors nationwide. It’s a truly innovative solution with unique programs that allow older people to trade their own cars to pay for rides, and enable volunteer drivers to store transportation credits for their own future transportation needs. ITN’s Road Scholarship Program converts volunteer credits into a fund for low-income riders, and the gift certificate program helps adult children support their parents’ transportation needs from across the street or across the nation.
For more information, please visit http://www.itnsarasota.org/
Overview provided by http://itnamerica.org/content/Overview.php.