Rossburn Age Friendly Access Awareness Event

Summary

Our committee decided to host a day to increase awareness among youth and local businesses in Rossburn, Mb. about the challenges older adults can encounter when going out for errands and shopping. We approached both Elementary and High Schools to have students perform the demonstrations. We had some students use walkers, canes, and some were pushed in wheelchairs. Several also wore very dark glasses which helped them realize the challenges facing those who are visually impaired. The entire event was videotaped, and staff and students did a de-briefing afterwards to discuss how they felt during the exercise. Based on this, a report was created and shared with local businesses regarding barriers obstructing older adults’ use of their stores.The video will be shared with our Age Friendly Mb office as well as the Minister responsible for Seniors and those with disabilities. Our MLA and MP were represented at this event. This also made them aware of the issues in most small communities across Canada. The only store in our town with automatic doors is the Park – Way Co-Op store. Since this exercise, the Town has received funding to make our Community Hall more Age Friendly by installing a lift in the building. Other local establishments have been encouraged to improve their accessibility so that all people, regardless of mobility issues, may be able to shop in their local stores.

Key facts

Main target group: mobility

Other target group(s): Mothers with babies in strollers etc.

Sector(s): Social protection

Desired outcome for older people:
Build and maintain relationships

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:

Accessibility
Inequities
Intergenerational activities

Other Issues: Just to try to educate everyone about disabilities and accessibility concerns folks face daily. Partnerships need to be stronger and have more people involved. Schools have connected some but there is room for more and better connections.

Contact details

Name: Kalyniuk, Shirley

Email address: shirkal@hotmail.com

Preferred language(s): English

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

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Local authorities

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

Details on older people’s involvement: They assisted with providing the tools needed to make this experience a success as it allowed the youth to use items to help them see the difficulty of getting around when they had to use a walker, cane or other items. They also showed the students how to use these.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: Yes

Please share with us what you found in detail:
That there is a huge barrier and lack of knowledge still out there. Isolation is not being addressed by government, medical staff etc. More money needs to be given (in grants) to communities to assit with these needs. Governments Federal and Provincial need to realize these HUGE barriers are not going away and need to be taken care of sooner rather than putting their heads into a sand pile and hoping that he problem will go away. Our people are living longer and are much smarter than their parents were so know what they want,need to stay healthy and younger longer.

Feedback:
Not really. There are still many out there that feel we haven’t done anything for our people and community.

Expansion plans:
Not really expand but just keep doing events and promoting ourselves by doing news letters and newspaper articles. We have looked at getting banners to Say Rossburn Age Friendly put at the 4 entries into Rossburn. Finances such as they are do not permit us to do that this year.

Looking back

Reflections:
Not much differently. Just wish we had more money to be able to do more positive promotions as well as advertising more.

Challenges:
Biggest challenge is not having the people /volunteer support. The province gave us a start up grant but now we must go it alone. So we will likely have to fund raise. This is a challenge as there are so many fundriasing events and being a small community you can beg for support just so many times before the donors start to say NO.