EngAGE began programming at Olivera Senior Apartments last month, offering classes in wellness, technology, art, and more. Here are photos from our new Paint & Sip class where everyone had a wonderful time creating art!
~ Meloney Morse, Regional Program Director
On June 20th, EngAGE CEO/Founder Tim Carpenter spoke at Beyond the Aging Network: A Roundtable Conversation on the Future of Aging, an event in Portland, OR, co-sponsored by the Oregon Gerontological Association and AARP Oregon. Here’s an informative follow-up article in the Portland Tribune:
Panel Dispels Myths about Aging
Last November, EngAGE CEO/Founder Tim Carpenter spoke on “The Art of Active Aging” at Kensington Village for the Shepherd’s Care Foundation‘s Campus of Wellness and Care Demonstration Project. The CWCDP is testing an innovation in real circumstances with real people at the Kensington Village Campus – Shepherd’s Care Foundation in Edmonton, AB. They are evolving understandings of how to work with the independent, oldest seniors living in congregate settings, and create with them environments that promote their health and wellbeing.
Extensive follow-up is now available. There are five PDF briefing notes:
1 – Data-Informed Health Promotion with Our Oldest Seniors
2 – Active Aging: Longevity Worth Living
3 – The Importance of Relationships in Independent Living
4 – Data Collection with Older Adults
5 – Housing/Home for Older Adults
Briefing Note 5 highlights factors that determine a senior’s success in living independently and includes the perspectives of Tim Carpenter.
FYI: All notes indicate Kelly Deis is the contact person. As the project is coming to a close the end of June, it is best that people contact Laura Haugen, who is the site administrator at Kensington Village.
Also FYI: If you’re unable to see the notes, please check the security settings on your browser that allow you to access PDFs. If you’re having difficulty on a Mac, please check “Help” for instructions.
Tune in to Experience Talks, our weekly “Radio Magazine for the Experienced Listener,” on Sundays at 5:00 PM PT on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 99.5 China Lake, 93.7 N. San Diego, streaming live online, and now syndicated on up to 100 Pacifica Network stations! Experience Talks is produced by the non-profit EngAGE, Inc.
Miss the show? You can always hear it as a podcast on the Listen Page of our website! You’ll also find an archive-in-progress of all of our previous shows there for you to enjoy. New shows are usually posted within 48 hours after broadcast.
RUSSELL BANKS grew up in a working-class world that has played a major role in shaping his writing. Through a dozen novels and short story collections that have won him Guggenheim and NEA grants and a St. Lawrence Prize for fiction, Banks has made a life’s work of charting the causes and effects of the terrible things “normal” men can and will do. He writes with an intensely focused empathy and a compassionate sense of humor that help to keep readers, if not his characters, afloat through the misadventures and outright tragedies in his books.
A prolific writer of fiction, Russell Banks’s titles include The Darling, The Sweet Hereafter, Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Affliction, Lost Memory of Skin, and a collection of short stories titled A Permanent Member of the Family. He is also the author of Dreaming Up America, an American edition of his nonfiction book of essays. His most recent book is a memoir titled Voyager.
His novels, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, were adapted into feature films which received widespread critical acclaim: James Coburn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Nick Nolte was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for their roles in “Affliction;” “The Sweet Hereafter” won three awards, including the Grand Prix and the International Critics Award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
Included among the numerous honors and awards Russell Banks has received are the Ingram Merrill Award, the John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were Pulitzer Prize finalists; Affliction, Cloudsplitter and Lost Memory of Skin were PEN/Faulkner Finalists. Lost Memory of Skin was a Finalist for the inaugural Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Learn more here.
This interview was originally broadcast in 2011.
Please join us for our very first Art Show at this community!
This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
~ Sandra Vargas, Regional Program Director
EngAGE CEO/Founder Tim Carpenter will speak at the Chorus America Conference on June 22nd. He’ll be leading the breakout session entitled, “Creative Aging and Choruses,” in which he’ll discuss the many social and health benefits that are gained by older people who sing in choruses.
Learn more about the conference here. Online registration is closed, but you can still register onsite at the Conference. Check the schedule for Registration hours.
Chorus America is the advocacy, research, and leadership development organization for choruses, choral leaders, and singers.
Bank of America recently awarded EngAGE a $10,000 grant to help fund the EngAGE in Wellness: Hunger Relief program, which partners with several large Southern California food banks to provide onsite delivery of several tons of free food each month to thousands of low-income residents living in 36 affordable apartment communities in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties.
Two significant problems facing seniors and others in accessing food banks are that the packaging of food is too bulky and the pick-up locations are unreachable for some populations. We staff the Wellness Program to solve these problems. Trucks pick up the food; parcel it into bi-monthly, usable packages; and arrange delivery to our senior and family apartment communities. Then, each month, EngAGE delivers and distributes 26,870 lbs. of free food to our participating residents —that’s 322,440 lbs. of food a year!
Through the years, EngAGE has also created and supervised on-site vegetable gardens in 14 communities we serve. Residents often prepare communal meals using produce from the community garden, and cooking/nutrition classes offered by EngAGE also typically incorporate produce from the community gardens.
In addition to providing access to and assistance growing food, EngAGE provides free onsite wellness classes weekly, teaching low-income residents how to prepare healthy meals, engage in congregate cooking onsite, practice better nutrition behaviors (including financial planning and literacy in relation to grocery shopping), and retain their health and independence. We also offer classes in exercise, strength building, fall prevention, health education, medication management, and others that empower residents to take on healthy behaviors that keep them in independent affordable housing and out of higher levels of care.
The EngAGE in Wellness program also provides needs-based onsite staff services, such as applications for discount utilities and financial assistance programs, health access, transportation, financial literacy education, and computer literacy, creating better financial stability and health for a very underserved population.
It’s estimated that 1 in 6 Americans are at risk of going hungry, and many seniors and working families are struggling to address other basic needs. EngAGE is excited to put this Bank of America grant to work by supporting vital needs in our community.
