Ecumen Scholars Program To Train Nurses Featured in Mankato Free Press
In today’s Mankato Free Press, Jessica Bies reports on Ecumen’s initiative to address the critical shortage of nurses being trained to care for Minnesota’s rapidly aging population.
Working with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), Ecumen is creating the Ecumen Scholars program to provide educational, vocational and financial opportunities for nursing students to pursue careers in senior health care.
The program is supported by a $1.9 million grant from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation.
SCAN Foundation Summit Makes One Wonder: Shouldn't The United States Have A Strategy For Paying for Alzheimer's Care?
If we can build railroads, airplanes and highways, our country should be able to build new, viable solutions for long-term services and supports that help millions of Americans with Alzheimer's and other long-term care needs.
Star Tribune Highlights Ecumen’s Efforts To Make Communities More Age Friendly
Ecumen, the City of Apple Valley, Minn., and national and international business partners, have been working for the past two years on the issue of how to make communities more age friendly.
This week the “Vitalocity!” initiative convened a three-day workshop in Apple Valley to get specific about how to make age-friendliness a reality. Ecumen’s partners in Vitalocity! are Kendal Corporation,a Pennsylvania-based senior services nonprofit company, and BusinessLab, a UK-based global strategy consultancy.
See Star Tribune Reporter Liz Sawyer’s story about the workshop, including an interview about the initiative with Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts, and Sawyer's follow-up story on specific steps Apple Valley could take to be more age friendly.
Ecumen of Litchfield Resident Don Nordlie’s Eyewitness Account of the Battle of Iwo Jima Memorialized
Don and Wanda Nordlie, residents of Ecumen of Litchfield, were at the battle of Iwo Jima almost 70 years ago. He was a Marine sergeant, and she was a nurse.
Two other Litchfield men, Roger Tipka, U. S. Army, and Stan Mortenson, U.S. Navy, also were there.
Don, Roger and Stan raised the flag during the National Anthem at a Minnesota Twins game a couple of weeks ago, no doubt remembering the famous Iwo Jima flag-raising that happened six days into what would be a bloody 36-day battle leaving almost 30,000 dead.
Litchfield resident Tim Mergen has brought their story to life, turning their battlefield recollections into a presentation honoring their service. Mergen points out that Iwo Jima is “pretty close to the size of Litchfield” and asks his audiences to “imagine going around Litchfield and laying 30,000 bodies across that town.”
How Mergen pieced the story together and continues to bring it home for local residents is the cover story in the September issue of Zest Magazine, a publication of the Litchfield Independent Review.
Elsie Williams, 9 Months Old, Is Changing Aging as Ecumen’s Youngest Volunteer
Meet Elsie Williams, the youngest, sweetest and cutest volunteer at Ecumen Seasons at Maplewood.
Last week Elsie mugged for the Star Tribune as she played Bingo with namesake resident Elsie Gustafson, 94. Star Tribune Columnist Gayle Rosenblum wrote the heartwarming story of Elsie and Elsie — a tale of how a charming 9-month-old connects across the generations
“It brings me so much joy to have her bring joy to older people,” says Amy Williams, Elsie’s proud mother, who is Ecumen’s Director of Development. “But it’s equally a gift to her. My Elsie will have so many friends of different ages.”
Top Five Blog Posts - September 29
In case you missed out on some of last week's Changing Aging blog posts, here are the stories Ecumen's online visitors found most interesting:
Adeline Carlson, a Gold Star Mother Living at Ecumen Detroit Lakes, Remembers That Day - Always
Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts Among Women Leaders Honored by George Family Foundation
Ecumen's Paul Libbon Named to Aging Services of Minnesota Board
Honoring the Rich Tradition of Volunteerism at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes
Ecumen Century Club: Honoring the Always Positive Pearl Nelson, 103
To read more Changing Aging stories or to learn more about Ecumen, please visit ecumen.org.
“Smile” on Ecumen When You Shop on Amazon
Amazon.com now offers a simple way to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop — at no cost to you.
When you shop at smile.amazon.com, Amazon automatically donates 0.5% of the price of your eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the charitable organization of your choice.
Most all Amazon products are eligible for donations, and all IRS-register charitable organizations qualify for contributions.
We hope you will “smile” on your favorite charitable organization. And we hope that’s Ecumen.
See AmazonSmile’s FAQ for more details and this USA Today story about the new program.
Ecumen Joining City of Apple Valley In Design Workshop Focused on Making Aging Advantageous to Cities
How does a city actually become “age friendly” to create competitive advantage amidst unprecedented demographic change?
Answers will come in a unique three-day work workshop September 30th to October 2nd in Apple Valley, Minnesota, which like most American communities is grappling with these very questions as their populations grow older in record numbers. Local, national and global experts from diverse sectors will create a roadmap for Apple Valley and cities globally that desire to turn “Age Friendly Community” from a phrase into a reality.
The workshop will be convened by Vitalocity! – a new consultancy founded by a group involving Ecumen , Kendal Corporation a Pennsylvania-based senior services nonprofit company, and BusinessLab, a UK-based global strategy consultancy. From September 30 through October 2, these founding partners will be joined by Apple Valley residents and community leaders along with representatives from global organizations such as the International Federation on Ageing, a World Health Organization (WHO) partner; Perkins Eastman, an international architectural and design firm; Sodexo, which provides nutritional and other quality of life services to more than 75 million consumers worldwide and global technology company, IBM.
The Problem: Our Cities Aren’t Designed for Aging
In today’s cities, if you’re not spry and mobile, you’re largely out of luck. This isolates people, limits their contributions to a city’s social and economic vitality, and can have significant health impacts.
Exploring this phenomenon in depth, WHO created the WHO Age Friendly City Framework, which provides eight characteristics (below) necessary for an age friendly city. The Framework is a critically important step in creating cities for all ages and stages, and more than 250 cities have subscribed to its tenets. But no entity exists globally that cities can turn to for cohesive planning and technical advice to turn the Framework into results.
Vitalocity! seeks to change that by bringing diverse skills and expertise together to help cities deliver phased, measurable, quantifiable results based on the eight components (below) of the WHO’s Age Friendly City Framework:
- Respect and social inclusion
- Outdoor spaces and buildings
- Transportation
- Communications and information
- Social participation
- Housing
- Community support and health
- Civic participation and employment
Our Cities’ Changing Population Driving Age-Friendly Strategy
For the first time in history, more than half of the human population - 3.3 billion people - live in cities. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. And this population is getting older. For example, in the last 10 years, in every one of America’s 51 largest major metropolitan areas, the number of children relative to the number of elderly has declined. In Pittsburgh, which is America’s oldest city demographically, almost 25% of the metro area’s population is over 60.
Locations long considered magnets for the young and hip are also aging rapidly. In Manhattan and San Francisco, almost 20% of the population is over 60, well above the national average.
According to a new report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and AARP, in 1990, less than 5 percent of U.S. counties had a population where adults over 50 made up more than 40 percent of the community (that was 156 counties). By 2010, this was true of 33 percent of all U.S. counties (or 1,031 of them). The U.S. population over age 65 is expected to include 73 million people by 2030 (that's about 33 million more than today).
And most of these people live in metropolitan areas, particularly suburbs, making Apple Valley an ideal location to launch this important work and turn age friendly design in our world from concept to reality.
Adeline Carlson, a Gold Star Mother Living at Ecumen Detroit Lakes, Remembers That Day — Always
Gold Star Mother Adeline Carlson, a resident of Ecumen Detroit Lakes, remembers that Sunday morning 46 years ago when a serviceman came to her door to tell her that her son Donald had died in the line of duty.
Honoring the Rich Tradition of Volunteerism at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes
Dedicated volunteers by the hundreds routinely help out at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City, Minn., and last week the community honored them for their service with a lunch and award ceremony.
“The special people you care for can’t always thank you themselves, so as an organization, we’d like to say ‘Thank you’ for all you do!” said Mara Krinke, community outreach coordinator, in greeting the luncheon guests.
Ecumen Parmly LifePointes has about 350 active volunteers who have given more than 9,700 hours of service in the past year.
“Parmly’s rich history of 110 years can’t be talked about without mentioning the many contributions of volunteers,” said Executive Director Frank Robinson. “Your dedication and gift of time is critical to making a difference in so many lives and supporting our mission of ‘creating home for older adults, wherever they choose to live.’”
The top award is the Phyllis Lindquist Volunteer of the Year Award, named for an outstanding volunteer and later resident who gave her time for 55 years and was the first Volunteer of the Year. This year the award was given to four individuals: Jane Iverson, Virgi Johnson, Faye VanHorn and Jacob Frischmon.
Also, service awards were given from the President’s National Council of Service and Civic Participation, established in 2003 as a way to recognize the valuable contributions of volunteers and to encourage more people to serve. Recipients received a service pin, a personalized certificate of appreciation and a letter from President Obama.
Lifetime Achievement service awards went to Karen Gustafson and Faye VanHorn for giving 4,000 or more hours in a lifetime.
Gold Award winners for 500 or more hours of service in a year were Jacob Frischmon, George Pokorny Sr., and Carmen Ihlenfeldt.
Silver Award winners for 250-499 hours were Richard Carlson, Anne Henzlik, Elaine Schumacher and Greg Whitney.
Bronze Award Winners for 100 to 249 hours were Faith Boston, Bob Butte, Nancy Butte, Gail Gaustad, Heidi Gieske, Jeanne Hajnasiewicz, Richard Helgreson, Eileen Hoffman, Jane Iverson, Shirley ‘Sunshine’ Mollan, Joan Peterson, Chuck Roberts, JoAnne Robertson, Harriet Ryberg, Roman Seidel and Donna Spreitzer.
Volunteer of the Year Winners (left to right) Jane Iverson, Vergi Johnson, Faye VanHorn, Jacob Frischmon