A conversation was begun with the Mayor of Fairfax in the summer of 2014 about how we might enhance our town’s services for seniors and our overall age friendliness. Being part of the county in California with the fastest growing senior population, we knew we needed to move quickly to better accommodate our beloved elders.

With the support and encouragement of both our Town Council and the Marin County Board of Supervisors’ Commission on Aging, the Town of Fairfax formed an Age Friendly Task Force and sent our application into the World Health Organization’s Global Network of Age Friendly Cities and Communities in December. We were delighted to be granted admission into the Global Network in February of 2015.

At its onset, the Age Friendly Fairfax Task Force had 12 members, representing our Town Council, the Chamber of Commerce and several of our local committees, as well as including a number of dedicated community volunteers. Informative data had been recently collected both locally and regionally about our town and the task force has begun to evaluate, using the eight domains of WHO, what we know about our age friendliness, where we’d like to see ourselves go in the near future and how we might propose to begin the journey to get there. We are meeting monthly and working enthusiastically toward the completion of our three-year community plan of action.

In addition to our neighbor, the City of Sausalito that became an Age Friendly City in 2014, three more of the 11 municipalities in Marin County are currently pursuing admission into the Global Network. The Marin County Commission on Aging has formed a support group for all of us involved in the Age Friendly movement and we are each eager to share what we do and what we learn with the larger international community. We look forward to sharing and learning from all cities and communities worldwide as we collectively make the world more welcoming to all of us as we age.