Helping people one continent at a time

Locally, she is known as a friend to seniors, but internationally, she has made a difference all around the world.

Margo Mohn, of Forest Meadows, has a knack for making things happen, whether starting a senior center close to home or helping Turkish women start a small business near Istanbul.
  

“She moves people ... and inspires them,” said Mark Skenfield, the president of the Faith Lutheran Church congregation in Murphys, in introducing Mohn Monday as the town celebrated its new senior center on the church campus.

Mohn serves as the site supervisor for the facility,which opened its doors on Wednesday.

Mohn will oversee a nutrition program, exercise classes focusing on strength training and fall prevention, art, music, bridge, an organic community garden and a variety of additional classes and support groups at the new establishment.

Her resumé indicates an excellent fit for the role. Mohn retired in 1995 after 20 years running senior programs in the Orange County municipality of Brea. She then moved to Calaveras County to live closer to her children and grandchildren.

Mohn soon found she could not stay away from the work, becoming the director of senior programs for the county.

After some time away from that role, she showed no reluctance in coming back to work for the nonprofit group that runs the Murphys Senior Center.

“When this opportunity came up, I felt I had to be a part of it,” Mohn said.

Opportunities to lend a helping hand have arisen on far-flung reaches of the earth for Mohn in recent years.

She spent three months in Africa in 2007, going along with special education teacher Ruth Ann White to visit White’s son, a missionary. While on the excursion, Mohn went to work teaching intercultural relationship skills to Zulus in Durban, South Africa.

“It was my joy to work with them,” she said.

Mohn also felt touched by residents of Biloxi, Miss., who were about two years removed from Hurricane Katrina when she volunteered in the town in August 2007.

"These people were not beaten,” she said, of those who were slowly but steadily recovering from the lingering impact of the natural disaster.

By March 2008, Mohn made her way to Antigua, Guatemala, where she helped deliver school supplies to children so poor they worked salvaging scraps from the garbage dump.

In the spring of this year, she returned to Turkey, where she had visited twice previously. Mohn connected with the Purdue family, missionaries from Chapel in the Pines in Arnold serving in a town near Istanbul.

On her prior visits, she noticed how men “were sitting around the local cafes … while women literally sat on the dirt at home.”  

A concern for oppressed women led Mohn to work at helping them develop a small business selling cheesecakes, muffins and confections to the tea shops where men gathered. In many cases, the women were earning an income and some economic independence for the first time.

“They have very little power in the home,” she said. “It’s exhilarating to see these women have a job.”

For Mohn, it is important to be useful, to be willing to do whatever needs to be done, wherever it needs to be done.

“When you say ‘Send me,’ you’d better be careful what you’re asking for,” she said. “It’s nice to have a little purpose in your life.”