Nominate Someone for The Purpose Prize
Do you know someone over 60 who is putting passion to work?
Thanks to Changing Aging reader Ellen Schneider for forwarding this …The Purpose Prize® is accepting nominations, including self-nominations, at www.encore.org/prize until March 5th.The Purpose Prize® provides ten awards of up to $100,000 to social entrepreneurs, 60 years and older, who are solving some of our most pressing social issues €“ from health care to the environment, poverty to education.Winners are leading a national movement of people in encore careers utilizing their skill and experience for the greater good.
Nominate today: www.encore.org/prize.
Jim Klobuchar: A Scavenger Hunt to Save Lives
Several of our readers who subscribe via email feed, said they didn’t receive Jim Klobuchar’s most recent post, so we’ve reposted it below … enjoy.
A Post by Jim Klobuchar, To read other 'Changing Aging' posts by Jim, go here:
I was in a scavenging frenzy and it was charged with guilt. Before my wife called in professional therapy, I explained this sudden frenzy.
A few weeks ago the Minneapolis Star Tribune told the story of Fran Heitzman, an 83-year-old-retired small businessman, a friend-of-humanity kind of guy, who was helping a single mother and her young daughter stock their kitchen.
He was adding some utensils to one of the trays when the girl exclaimed to her mother: “Just think, mom, now we won’t have to share spoons when we eat.”
When he got home Heitzman opened the kitchen drawers and liberated five sets of silver he and his wife didn’t need. It was the beginning of an expanding service now called Bridging. The idea is for thousands of people wading in stuff they no longer use€”particularly furniture€”to stock it in a warehouse in suburban Bloomington , where it’s put it into the hands of people who need. Anybody can play. Right now it’s become a furniture store for more than 5,700 struggling families.
I thought about my own too-much-stuff again a few days later when a woman speaking in church told of visiting Guatamala by bus with other church members. They drove through a village, looking at the scenes of poverty, and then someone said, “let’s get out of the bus,” an emotional summons to meet these people, hands-on and to look into their eyes not with pity but with a promise of befriending.
What I know from my travel is that these people want to lift their lives and their children’s lives. I know it from the hundreds I have seen and met and now have written about in a book called “The Miracles of Barefoot Capitalism. It tells of the millions of poor but ambitious women around the world who build tiny businesses with loans as small as $50, loans that have to be repaid, and are at the astonishing rate of 97 percent.
But something else touched me deeper. Most of them are illiterate but they receive training in disease prevention, family planning and more. I attended the weekly meeting of a group of 30 women in Kathmandu, Nepal. A woman applied for a third loan. She had been signing the application form by using an inkpad and her thumb print. On this day she laboriously scrawled her name, for the first time. And then she stood and looked at the signature, and cried. She could write her name! Now, at the age of 50. And all of the women gathered around her, hugged her, and cried with her.
And so did I.
A 107-Candle Salute to Ecumen Customer Marion Davidson
The Beauty of Aging at Ecumen’s Villages of North Branch Community
For our readers in the North Branch, Minnesota, area: You’re invited to a special photo exhibit featuring the Beauty of Aging on Thursday, Feb. 5th from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at The Villages of North Branch, Ecumen community. Appetizers and refreshments will be served. Carol Seefeldt is a wonderful photographer, who has volunteered her time and skills with Ecumen communities. Thank you to her and our customers who shared themselves with us for this show.
Minneapolis' Take on Beacon Hill Village and Redefining Senior Living
A group of seniors takes a near-daily walk along the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis. Organized by a seniors co-op, they are, from left: Mary Margaret McMillan, 60; Ellie Hands, 69; Suzanne Joyce, 75; Peggy Lucas, 67; Delia Bujold, 70; and Barb Goldner, 64. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)'You can see the tracks,' said Ecumen trustee and Mill City Commons member Peggy Lucas in Jeremy Olson’s Saint Paul Pioneer Press article. She was talking about the resident deer near the Stone Arch Bridge on the edge of downtown Minneapolis, but she also could just as well have been talking about the groundbreaking tracks she and her neighbors are making by creating a new kind of community. Ecumen is proud to be working with these trailblazers to forge a new way. To read the full article, go here.
President Obama’s Web Site Features Long-Term Care - An American First
This is an American first … a presidential web site that features long-term care and long-term care financing. In the agenda' section on the White House web site, President Obama highlights long-term care with this paragraph below.
Strengthen Long-Term Care Options: Obama and Biden will work to give seniors choices about their care, consistent with their needs, and not biased towards institutional care. They will work to reform the financing of long term care to protect seniors and families, and to improve the quality of elder care by training more nurses and health care workers.
As the President and other policymakers think about innovating in long-term care financing reform, here are two great resources: AAHSA’s Long-Term Care Solution web site and Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts' whitepaper on long-term care financing, which you can download here in the long-term care section.
Ecumen Changing Aging Writer’s Work Hits White House Super Bowl Party
Changing Aging contributing writer Jim Klobuchar’s work was present at the White House for President Barack Obama’s Super Bowl party. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) was one of several guests who made up a politically diverse gathering at last evening’s White House Super Bowl gathering. For our readers outside of Minnesota, Sen. Klobuchar is Jim’s daughter.According to MinnPost, the Minnesota senator brought the Presidential host a signed copy of her father’s 1977 book, “Will the Vikings Ever Win the Super Bowl?”And, though the answer to that question might still be no, Jim wanted to make one point clear.'Dear Mr. President,' he wrote inside Obama’s copy. 'I would consider apologizing for the Vikings season, but the Bears was worse.'Watch for Jim’s next Changing Aging column this week. You can read his previous columns here.
Vital Aging at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes Community
Just wanted to share this story done by WCCO-TV last week on the Vitalize! Wellness Centre at the Ecumen community of Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City, Minn.Curious, what other innovations are you seeing in senior living? Would love to hear about them.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CgSfGIhFoc[/youtube]
Dying a Good Death and Dr. Mark Bowron
The other day Changing Aging featured an article written by Dr. Mark Bowron on dying and end of life care. (If you haven’t taken our poll question, please do so … it’s here.) If you’d like to hear an interview with Dr. Bowron on this subject, he’s on Minnesota Public Radio today at 10 a.m. for an hour. MPR archives all of their broadcasts, you can pull it up and listen to it later also. He’s being interviewed by Kerri Miller on Midmorning. Here’s the link.
Seeking Your Book Ideas for Our Leadership Conference
Have you read any good books recently related to leadership, change, innovation, wisdom, aging well, and spirituality and aging, or other subjects that can help us in innovation in our profession? If so, we’d love to hear the name of the book and a brief synopsis in the comments section below.At our annual Ecumen Leadership Conference, which is an annual gathering of about 500 Ecumen leaders, Borders Book Store holds a book fair. So, if you have any good suggestions that we can pass to them, please leave them here.Thanks.