Posted 08/26/2009 - 05:17:49pm by Terry Nagel in Encore Nation
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to make 50 senior centers "model centers of wellness" with more activities and innovative programs, according to the New York Daily News.
Under his $25 million proposal, the centers will focus on ways to make city living easier for aging residents, acting upon 59 recommendations by the City Council and the New York Academy of Medicine. Among them: offering health club discounts, giving free air conditioners to seniors in poor health and using idle school buses to drive seniors to grocery stores on weekdays.
He explained that the centers "will be held responsible for producing results in the form of vibrant programs, high participation rates and also better health outcomes for the older New Yorkers who frequent them."
Seems to me these centers could also be places where people get help in finding their encore careers. What do you think?
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The 59 recommendations
Here are the recommendations that came out of the New York City study to make life easier for older adults:
http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2009b%2Fpr386-09.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1
Terry Nagel
Encore.org
Model Centers for Seniors
Joe Wasylyk Seniorpreneur
First of all, I think that N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be commended just for stepping outside the proverbial 'Seniors Box' and suggesting to make 50 senior centers as 'model centers of wellness'. I know that wellness is very important because without wellness it would be somewhat difficult to handle either an encore or an entrepreneurial career. Now, the question is can Mayor Bloomberg or anyone else take the next critical step which for me is to create "model centers of lifelong learning" which focusses more on mental wellness as compared to physical wellness. Ideally, it would be nice if all of these activities could be located in a single site. If this is not possible, then a new paradigm still needs to be developed to offer Seniors an affordable facility for encore career orientation and/or financial education for the purpose of entrepreneurial activity.
Joe Wasylyk
Seniorpreneur
Senior centers are the few community gathering places
When I suddenly found myself downsized last year, I looked around for a community resource where I could sit with my computer, do research, network, freelance and in general get out of the house and into an environment as productive as the one I had been accustomed to my entire adult life. It was not an easy search. In my small town in Pennsylvania the only community center was the library, not bad but not perfect. I realized for the first time how important offices are as gathering places and how few other places there are to gather.
I wanted a gathering place oriented towards my needs, with more services, and camaraderie among people trying to do things. Senior centers are really close to what I'm looking for. As a boomer, the only senior centers I had visited were oriented towards a different generation, and of course boomers don't want to be called seniors. But I believe that with some tweaking these centers could become an important resource for us "working seniors."
Jerry
Visit my blog about reading and writing memoirs
Memory Writers Network
Senior Centers in a Comprehensive Encore Career Strategy?
Like Community Colleges, senior centers might have a place in a comprehensive strategy for advancing the encore career movement, including offering resource space for planning post-career employment. Residents might be a valuable source of advice and direction. Sharing space (between senior service and encore career functions) could offer the valuable community work space resources suggested by Jerry Wexler. The process could meet social and occupational needs of residents, as well as offer growth of care facilities that "boomers" may need in the future.
This discussion of senior centers and retirement may reinforce the misconception that retirement, encore careers, and old age represent a single life-stage. These factors reflect at least two distinct stages. While they may overlap, and definitions may be fuzzy, active engagement in independent living and occupation (employment, enterprise, or volunteer activity) is a distinctly different lifestage than stages associated with long-term and hospice care.
Clarifying the distinction between stages of mid-life and old-age may be critical to the whole issue of "re-invention of 'retirement'".
Unemployment and shrinking job markets (combined with strains on agencies serving populations facing "barriers to employment", and the trend towards self-employment) highlight the fact that potential encore careerists may have more in common with situations of younger workers (and potential workers), than with markets for geriatric services.
With unemployment approaching ten million people, and three million people reaching retirement age every year* (combined with "work-at-home" parents and other non-traditional job market elements), the scope of the market appears to be way beyond capacity of existing senior centers (or any other existing service agencies).
I am trying to find a viable model for community work space. Senior Centers might be part of the package, but I don't currently see it. In terms of space for pursuing direction in encore careers, Senior Centers might be a realistic part of the solution.
Jim Riddell
*Note that numbers are estimates based on data from Census Bureau tables. They are offered for discussion and for picturing issues. They are not based on credible published summaries, so they may be subject to significant arithmetic errors.