{"id":23735,"date":"2019-05-09T16:54:02","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23735"},"modified":"2019-05-09T16:54:12","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:54:12","slug":"seniors-centre-breaks-down-barriers-by-breaking-down-walls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/seniors-centre-breaks-down-barriers-by-breaking-down-walls\/","title":{"rendered":"Seniors\u2019 Centre breaks down barriers by breaking down \u201cwalls\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a lively\ndiscussion over the phone as five local residents \u2013 men and women \u2013 debated the\ntrue origin of the telephone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander Graham\nBell invented the device that has helped connection billions of people around\nthe world. Not so fast, said others, the man truly responsible for the\ntelephone is still being disputed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The matter went\nunsettled at the end of the conversation, but one thing was clear: the phone\nstill serves to connect. But these five provided it can do something even more\npotent: break down barriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five women and\nmen were Thursday\u2019s participants in Tip Top Trivia, a friendly phone\ncompetition hosted by the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre as part of their Seniors\u2019\nCentre Without Walls program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Seniors\u2019 Centre\nWithout Walls (SCWW) program is a free, interactive telephone-based initiative\nthat connects seniors 55-and-over, as well as persons with disabilities, who\nfind it difficult to leave the home for extended periods of time, including\ntrips to the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the use of\ngroup telephone calls, organizers say SCWW provides \u201ca rich lineup of\nbrain-stimulating activities\u201d as well as a \u201cspace to create meaningful\nfriendships and connections to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Seniors\u2019\nCentre was inspired to spearhead the SCWW by an initiative run by The Good\nCompanions, a seniors\u2019 centre in Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduced to the\nprogram through a webinar, Karie Papillon, Adult Program Coordinator for the\nAurora Seniors\u2019 Centre, and her colleague Andrew Bailey, immediately saw the\nbenefits just such an initiative could bring to the local community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of the data\ncoming out of what they are doing with the program is astronomical,\u201d says Ms.\nPapillon. \u201cIn Ottawa, the average participant who takes part in these calls\nactually lives on less than $15,000 a year. Most of them have health\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[challenges]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or disabilities that keep them stranded at home, and 88 per cent\nof them say it has increased their socialization in life and decreased their\nisolation. The number that is most staggering to me is that it actually\ndecreases ER visits by 50 per cent. With the state of our healthcare budget and\nour healthcare today, that is a huge number.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were sitting in\nthis webinar and Andrew turned to me and said, \u2018We can do this,\u2019 and it just\nrolled from there. We brainstormed how to do it back in July and it took us\nuntil March of this year to actually start the calls and get it off the\nground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping to get the\nprogram off the ground was an important grant from the Federal Government\u2019s New\nHorizons for Seniors Program, support from the Town, as well as an assist from\nThe Good Companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Good Companions\nput together almost a Seniors\u2019 Centre Without Walls in a box,\u201d says Ms.\nPapillon. \u201cIt came with ideas we could use, different strategies, and a lot of\nthe programming content we started out with we stole flat out from The Good\nCompanions with their cheerful permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been at the\nSeniors\u2019 Centre for 10 years and all of us at the Centre knows someone who just\ncan\u2019t come in anymore. It is really sad; these are active, vital people who,\nfor some reason or another, such as transportation, or they can\u2019t walk, or\nthey\u2019re sick, they\u2019re now losing their base of friends. We want this to be a\nstop-gap measure for those people who can\u2019t quite come in anymore, or even\nthose who can only come in once a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such participant\nin Thursday afternoon\u2019s Tip Top Trivia challenge is usually only able to come\ninto the Seniors\u2019 Centre on Wednesdays and Fridays, but thanks to the SCWW\ninitiative, she\u2019s able to participate in programming four days a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another participant\nstarted out just as a participant, calling in to take part in the variety of\nactivities offered by the SCWW, but so positive was her experience that she\u2019s\nnow gearing up to lead a tele-activity of her own for fellow Aurora seniors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are looking to\nexpand this as big as we can,\u201d says Mr. Bailey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe numbers of participants\nper call is one of our [measurables],\u201d adds Ms. Papillon. \u201cWe started off with\none or two a week and we had seven last Thursday, five this Thursday and we\u2019re\npleased with that amount of growth in less than a month. Penny is stepping up\nto help us lead some calls and is now a volunteer in the program which shows us\ngrowth and excitement. With any luck, we\u2019ll have a big enough demand to have up\nto three calls a week starting in September.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on how to be part of this\ndemand, or want to point someone in the direction of the Seniors\u2019 Centre\nWithout Walls program, call 905-727-3123 x3614 or email scww@aurora.ca. SCWW is\nopen to all individuals 55+ living in Aurora, all adults with physical\ndisabilities living in Aurora, and participation is not limited to Seniors\u2019\nCentre members. Volunteers are also welcome.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a lively discussion over the phone as five local residents \u2013 men and women \u2013 debated the true origin of the telephone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6aP","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 14:13:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}