City gives $15K grant to LEARN for its Imagination Alive
By GILLIAN SLADE on June 9, 2019.
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade The city has given a grant of $15,000 to enable a local organization to continue its program of connecting high school students with seniors in the Imagination Alive project. LEARN (Lifelong Education And Resource Network) paired 23 Medicine Hat High School students with 11 residents at Sunnyside Care Centre for an hour twice a week in a pilot project. Having identified that someone with dementia still has an active imagination students assisted residents at Sunnyside Care Home in developing a story from looking at a picture. Those stories are now being published in a book, said Deborah Forbes, executive director LEARN. “It is at the publisher’s and it is going to be a beautiful book,” said Forbes. “These stories are just so exceptional. There are 99 wonderful stories.” The grant will help with the cost of publishing the book and help to broaden the Imagination Alive project, said Forbes. Whether this will mean students going to more local seniors residences is still being worked out. “We don’t know exactly what shape it is going to take but it was so successful that we definitely want to take the successful elements and try them again,” said Forbes. The city’s Social Development Advisory Board (SDAB) recommended the grant because of proven success of the pilot project. They also approved of the objectives that will address social issues such as addressing loneliness and isolation in seniors due to dementia, the opportunity is gives young people to become engagement in this inter-generational approach. 11-10
