This is a perfect life enrichment activity that provides seniors a serious way to give back.

I would almost rather that you first just watch the video below, but let me set the stage before you do. In my view the perfect senior living activity has the following attributes:

  • Seniors at all levels of care and services from independent living to skilled nursing can participate
  • It is relational
  • It makes a real, measurable contribution to the world we live in
  • Even better in this case, there are likely to be more opportunities for seniors to get involved than there are seniors

Now the video, which runs an exceedingly well spent 3:29:

The Details

After reading a story about the video I reached out to Karen Larson, the Executive Director of Windsor Park Retirement Community a Chicago area CCRC owned and operated by Covenant Retirement. Here is the story. A branch of the Brazilian based language school CNA had this idea that their students would learn English better if they could have conversations with native English speakers. The school had easy access to Skype and knew that many senior living communities in the US also had access. The reached out to Windsor Park Retirement to see if they were interested. They were! Watching the video just once is evidence that the experiment was a huge success for both residents and students.

Why This is So Important

This is so important to seniors and to the senior living industry for these reasons:

  • Life enrichment activities, that create purpose and meaning, will make your senior community more attractive to younger residents.
  • As the Windsor Park residents develop strong bonds with these young people their “will to live” and interest in their surroundings will grow stronger. This means they will be healthier and live longer.
  • These kinds of meaningful activities will bring relief and satisfaction to resident family members who, too often, see their elders just waiting to die.
  • There will be positive bleed over to staff as they help residents connect with these students because they, too, will know they are a part of something special and larger than themselves.

Looking for More Information for Your Community

Fill out the form below and I will send your information to Karen.  Submitting your information here will only be used for this one purpose.  It won’t even get you on the Senior Housing Forum email list. This is a brand new thing so it may take some time to get a response. You might also consider searching for your own language schools in other countries. They are only a Google search away.

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