More and more senior adults are living longer and independently in their own homes. Both Jewish Family Services and Catholic Charities want to make sure that life remains good for these people, so they have come together to sponsor the Active Adult Expo: Healthy Mind, Body & Spirit on Thursday, Aug. 15, at the Jewish Community Campus. The Expo will take place from 8:30 a.m. to noon at the Jewish Community Campus. It is free and open to the entire community.
The Active Adult Expo will include information, activities and inspiration for those who attend. (For more information see box.)
Dawn Herbet, JFS director of older adult initiatives, said organizers decided to put on the expo as a way to help change people’s perceptions about getting older.
“Aging is an amazing time in people’s lives. Today people are remaining vibrant and active and independent and I think with the influx of the thousands and thousands of people who are turning 65 on a daily basis, we needed to really change the paradigm of what aging means in our society,” Herbet said.
“We’re hoping that the Active Adult Expo provides a morning of fun, information and thought-provoking ideas to the active older adults in our community,” she continued.
Monica Burgin, associate director of senior care services for Catholic Charities, said both social services agencies have begun seeing the needs shift to the younger older adults who want to stay active, want to be involved in the community and continue to be able to give back to it.
“We feel this is a great opportunity to not only provide volunteer opportunities, but to see the different services that are offered and even just get an idea of how important wellness or exercise services are to them as well as education on some of the issues that might be coming up. We feel it is very important to start getting the word out about how to stay active and remain in their own home,” Burgin said.
Herbet thinks sponsoring this expo is just a small drop in the ocean in making people understand that there are services, programs and options for older adults who want to remain active, independent, vibrant and happy.
“It’s a wonderful time in peoples’ lives. The more I work in this field, the more I meet such wonderful women and men who are aging and having fun and loving life. I’m hoping that this expo just gives older adults some options and thoughts about what they can do to make their lives happy and loving it as they get older,” Herbet said.
Herbet said organizers have purposely not tagged an age range of appropriate attendees.
“It depends on how you perceive yourself,” Herbet said. “This expo is for anybody who thinks of themselves as in a place where they are aging and they want to be able to learn about how it is to age well,” she said.
In addition, Herbet said the expo can be for family members of people who are aging. She said there will be information on a variety of topics including financial planning and caregiving.
JFS and Catholic Charities have been working together on projects for about five years now. Burgin said both organizations have the same mission and goal when it comes to senior adults — that it takes an entire community, not just one organization, to provide everything seniors need to remain active and independent.
“People need to realize it takes a lot of different organizations to come together to provide services,” Burgin said.
JFS’ Herbet said this program fits both organizations’ missions to serve their communities.
“When we originally started working on JET Express almost five years ago I worked very closely with Senior Express, which is Catholic Charities’ volunteer driver program and it was a wonderful ecumenical joining. So it just made sense for JFS to go back to them again for this program,” Herbet said.
Similar to JFS in that it does not serve only the Jewish community, Catholic Charities’ services are not limited to Catholics. In fact Burgin said 75 percent of Catholic Charities clients are not Catholic.
“Our services are open to anyone in the community regardless of their race or religious background,” Burgin said.
Burgin thinks this expo is a good partnership for the two organizations as they provide different services.
“We just always felt that together we could provide this opportunity for people to not only learn about our organizations and what we do for older adults, but the different agencies and services we provide. It’s important to get this information out to older adults so if they want to remain in their homes they know the opportunities and services that are out there in the community.”
