{"id":231547,"date":"2025-07-03T07:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=231547"},"modified":"2025-07-07T15:09:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T19:09:37","slug":"uconn-magazine-the-good-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/07\/uconn-magazine-the-good-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Magazine: The Good Neighbor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It\u2019s easy to say, \u2018It\u2019s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.\u2019 Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Fred Rogers<\/em><\/p>\n

In Mister Rogers\u2019 view, Michelle (Bussiere) Puzzo \u201998 (CAHNR<\/a>) is a hero.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust help people,\u201d says the co-founder, chief executive, and only paid staff member of UR Community Cares. \u201cJust help people that say they need help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking in her office on the second floor of the Eastside Neighborhood Resource Center in Manchester, Connecticut, Puzzo is the consummate responder, offering solution after solution to problems faced by older adults who seek to age in place in a world where community is diminished, aging is stigmatized, and help is hard to come by \u2014 and expensive.<\/p>\n

For decades after earning her bachelor\u2019s in physical therapy, Puzzo provided in-home PT to older people after strokes, heart attacks, or surgeries. On most visits, patients would ask for something beyond the scope of her work \u2014 a hand with laundry, taking out the trash, or looking up a cleaning service on their smartphones.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people were just living \u2014 and struggling to live \u2014 alone at home,\u201d she says. Many couldn\u2019t afford an aide or didn\u2019t qualify for assistance programs. She saw it on a personal level, too, with her own grandmother who suffered from macular degeneration and dementia. For years, Puzzo mowed her grandmother\u2019s lawn \u00adweekly and helped her with miscellaneous needs, pitching in as the entire family rallied to help Meme live her later years in her home. \u201cShe was so reliant on us. It\u2019s hard on a family,\u201d Puzzo says. \u201cWe\u2019re just not set up socially to have these support systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Meme died in February 2019, Puzzo acted on the idea for UR (pronounced \u201cyour\u201d) Community Cares, which had been gestating for a while. She registered her business with the state and set up a website; from there, it has been Puzzo waking up at 3 a.m. every day, tapping into resources, connecting with others who want to help, networking, marketing, and raising money to grow one person\u2019s notion into a statewide organization of thousands.<\/p>\n

Just before the pandemic hit, Puzzo created Neighbors Helping Neighbors, the signature program of UR Community Cares. Its secure online platform connects volunteers with people over age 70 (or those over 18 with a disability) who need help. Participants on both sides undergo background checks (\u201cJust because you\u2019re 80 doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a good person,\u201d Puzzo says), and volunteers can\u2019t do any licensed work, but requests for housework, transportation, yardwork, and companionship are fair game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phone is ringing all day long \u2014 insurance company denials, lack of community support, people not able to drive themselves home from a colonoscopy,\u201d Puzzo says. \u201cThis really adds value to communities to be able to support people that aren\u2019t able to pay for private caregivers or handymen,\u201d she continues. \u201cThe problem exists in every single town. The whole world is aging, and how are we going to handle it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read on for more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle (Bussiere) Puzzo \u201998 (CAHNR) is transforming Connecticut communities with a growing business and a simple mantra, \u201cJust help people that say they need help\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":231549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2296,147,2224,1866,2226,2649,2235,102,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1929],"class_list":["post-231547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allied-health-sciences","category-alumni","category-cahnr","category-engr","category-clas","category-blue-pride","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-magazine","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 10:30:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232557,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231547\/revisions\/232557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/231549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231547"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=231547"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=231547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}