Adding life to years
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City of Summerside’s Age-friendly Business project


Summary

Our project included strategies we shared with seniors about what makes businesses age-friendly. In turn, Seniors mentored other seniors and business owners on the same, with the intent for businesses to become age-friendly.

Working with a social worker from Home Instead, we trained 20 senior ambassador mentors. Our goal was to reach 20 businesses in Summerside and have the ambassadors work with the staff to encourage comfortable shopping opportunities and experiences for seniors. The goal was to make seniors feel more welcomed and socially included in their own community. To our surprise, the first 20 businesses were so successful that our ambassadors reached 100 businesses! The businesses received a certificate and a decal to display to indicate that they are age-friendly. We also produced a map to share with the community that indicated where the age-friendly businesses are located.

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Sector(s): Information and communication

Desired outcome for older people:
Meet their basic needs

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:
  • Ageism
  • Accessibility
  • Dementia
  • Inclusion

Contact details

Name: Judy-Lynn Richards

Email address: jlrichards@upei.ca


Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Private sector

Others involved in the project:
  • Volunteers

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: Older people developed the training and manual and trained the senior ambassadors who used their training to educate the businesses on age-friendly practices.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? No

Looking back

Challenges:
The biggest challenge was to get the business owners to buy in to the process. We addressed this by arranging face to face meetings with the business owners to discuss the advantages of becoming age-friendly.