Seniors Count Symposium, Neighbors Care: Let’s Make It Happen! Promotes Livable Communities for Manchester’s Frail Elderly
Seniors Count is working to ensure that frail seniors can live and age in their community. Collaboration partners are committed to raising awareness, reinforcing values, leveraging resources and coordinating services that support the independence and well-being of older people. Partners include businesses, civic and government agencies, medical services, social services and private individuals.
“There is a growing consensus that working in silos, or as individual organizations, has not worked well in the past and we must leverage our resources to the benefit of our frail seniors,” said Seniors Count Project Director Arlene Kershaw. “Seniors Count, a community experiment in collaboration, has been successful and has sparked others to use Seniors Count as a model.
This “advocacy” message was enforced whole-heartedly by keynote speaker and national expert from Washington, D.C. Elinor Ginzler, Director of Livable Communities at the AARP Office of Social Impact. Symposium speakers also including NH Commissioner of Health and Human Services Nicholas Toumpas, Chief of the Bureau of Elderly & Adult Services Kathleen Otte, Easter Seals NH President & CEO Larry Gammon, Moore Center President & CEO Paul Boynton, City of Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas, and Genevieve Baldoumas, a senior whose life have been positively impacted by the services she received through Seniors Count initiatives.
In addition to the speakers, Seniors Count recognized exemplary efforts on behalf of seniors with the Young Professional Award given to Lisa Boucher. Boucher, of Manchester, is a Broker/Partner at Hearthside Realty and has been an active participant on the Seniors Count Neighborhood Committee since August 2008. This past fall, she mobilized and led a team of 26 volunteers who cleaned yards, raked, cleaned gutters and washed windows for more than a dozen frail seniors in Manchester.