The day started off bright and early with a trip to Costco to pick up a large amount of pizza for the senior prom at the West Center. Once I arrived patrons of the center quickly ask if they can help me offload the pizza which was great. Then once my group and I assembled, we began setting up decorations in the photo booth alongside the area for all the games and activities for the day. We finished early and it was so funny watching the seniors getting excited about what they were going to be partaking in shortly. Once underway, we got things started with nice music and an announcement of the prom king and queen, which I thought was so heartwarming especially when they had their first dance. I did notice however that there were not a lot of people dancing but they still seemed to be enjoying their time watching the festivities. Meanwhile at the Photo Booth and gaming area, the seniors were enjoying all the carnival themed activities that were set up for them playing ring toss to playing bean bag toss. While I was at the Photo Booth it was amazing to see how everyone was standing in line enjoying themselves as if they were waiting for some special concert to take place or to get into a club. The seniors were so excited to enter the Photo Booth they were dressing themselves up in the assortment of carnival garb they had at their disposal. Another highlight of the event was when we held the raffle and people were so excited when their number called everyone received very nice gifts. Overall I had a really great time interacting with our friends at the West Center and I was glad to hear from many of the seniors how much they appreciated what we did for them and how they cannot wait till next year. After we completed the event at West Center, the following class was a quick debrief about our thoughts and feelings about how the prom went and to my pleasure the majority of the class felt that everything went really well and the seniors had an amazing time at the event. The only negative thing that was mentioned was that the event felt as if it was rushed and the seniors did not have enough time to do everything that they wanted to do potentially due to time constraints. After that discussion, we enjoyed a wonderful array of different food people brought to class for our potluck. The last portion of our class was just going over some of the details about how we are going to plan our healthy aging project and form groups. I felt this was an amazing way to end a nice quarter.
Earlier this week in class, we discussed details about our healthy aging project at the West Center that was coming up soon. My group was super excited about planning this dance for the seniors because we felt they would really appreciate it and we were also hoping that we would see some familiar faces from when we visited them last time. Today, we mainly focused on our neighborhood assessment project presentations. Our group decided to visit the town of Little Italy. Little Italy is full of history and amazing culture. Our group had an amazing time visiting the community where we ventured off into the farmers market and even indulged in some of their fresh foods. While giving our presentation we did discuss some of the findings in regards to senior living or lack thereof because there was only one senior living home in the area. Also, after chatting with some of the community residents we found out there is not much in terms of transportation inside of Little Italy which makes it hard to access food. For example, the nearest Albertsons and Vons were not within walking distance compared to the neighborhoods. It was also interesting to learn that the majority of the housing there was mainly young renters and this was unfortunate because we learned that most of the housing that was there were mostly luxury apartments and there were only a small amount of affordable housing options for seniors. Overall, after completing the neighborhood assessment project presentation and discussing the findings with the class we felt as a group Little Italy is more geared towards the younger crowds simply for the fact that most of the stores there tend to cater to younger crowds, the terrain which was mostly uphill would be difficult for certain seniors to navigate, and also the fact that most of the luxury apartments were all typically high-rise buildings with a lot of stairs which could present a problem for elders.
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WAYNE B HARRISONWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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