By HABIB FATMI, EFCL Community Development Officer
This was the second year for the Seniors Friendly Community Leagues Workshop, and the theme for the workshop focused on a number of topics brought up during the 2013 workshop. The purpose of such workshops are to develop and implement strategies for encouraging seniors programs, volunteerism and seniors support in the community leagues.
The workshop was open to all leagues and was held October 23 at the South East Edmonton Seniors Association Hall. I’m very pleased to say it was well-attended, especially by league seniors liaisons and seniors serving agencies. We received some excellent feed-back, especially around developing and implementing strategies for access to social, recreational, artistic, intellectual and cultural opportunities and physical activities, educate on diverse residents of community.
Sheila Hallett, executive director for Edmonton Seniors Coordinating Council, provided some very informative facts on the city’s seniors while Shelley Kwong, City of Edmonton’s Age Friendly Initiative, provided a number of excellent resource documents.
The most interesting topics were Seniors Liaison position in leagues and the various grant/funding available to the leagues. Some of the community leagues seniors shared their current programs and ideas, including community gardening, yoga classes and wheel chair accessibility in the community leagues buildings.
The city provided information on how to apply for “Age Friendly Edmonton Innovation Fund” and a list of Healthy Aging Information Sessions for 2014-2015.
This event was sponsored by EFCL, Edmonton Seniors Coordinating Council and the City of Edmonton’s Age Friendly Initiative. If you have any suggestions or topics that can help community leagues, seniors and senior-serving agencies, we would love to hear from you. The EFCL would be glad to consider them for next workshop. You can reach me at habib.fatmi@efcl.org
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