50+ Lifestyles

CASI is There for Our Community in Time of Need

By Laura L. Kopp, MS
CASI President/CEO

For over 50 years, CASI has served as Eastern Iowa’s only comprehensive community based Senior Center.  CASI provides more than 7,000 activities every year to more than 5,000 seniors, all in an effort to create a community where everyone can live and age well.

Over the last five years, CASI’s mission and our commitment to serving as a community Hub, helping those in need, has been tested time and time again.  But despite a yearlong COVID shut down in 2020 and massive funding cuts in 2018 and 2023, CASI has been proud to step forward, to lend a hand and to open a door to our community partners striving to support all Quad Citizens – most especially in times of true community crisis.

CASI and its staff have spent the last 5 decades building partnerships and a reputation of strength and dependability amongst our friends and colleagues. So, when news spread that the building at 324 Main collapsed one Sunday evening, it was not odd or out of the ordinary that we immediately connected with Trish at the Red Cross to ask how we could help.  We had just helped provide showers to those impacted by the floods a few weeks prior when the shelter they were in had no hot water. When Trish advised that the shelters closest to the residents of the building were “on the grid” and left without electricity and water, it was a no brainer that the more than 40,000 square feet of space at CASI would be an ideal location for temporary and immediate emergency shelter. The CASI facility is handicap accessible, air conditioned, equipped with multiple bathrooms and showers and has the ability to segregate large groups based on need. We even have a commercial kitchen!

We received so much gratitude for our willingness to open our doors and suspend our normal activities to help those impacted by this community tragedy. And while I am grateful for our community’s recognition, I find what we did to be so unremarkable in that it so resembles the good works that take place within our CASI walls every single day.  Despite our challenges and despite the recent decisions impacting our mission, CASI will always step forward to offer a hand up and an open door to those in need.  Community is at the Center of everything that we do at CASI.

Laura L. Kopp, MS is President/CEO of CASI, located at 1035 W. Kimberly Road, Davenport, IA  52806. For information call (563) 386.7477 or email info@CASIseniors.org.