AARP Surveys Help Determine Grant Direction

Albion College student interns Dejanay Robinson and Sarah Starkey have been meeting with seniors at the Forks Senior Center to encourage them to fill out the AARP Age-Friendly Community grant survey. The interns have also taken the surveys to other places in the community to gather information for the AARP grant project.

Becoming an AARP Age-Friendly Community requires help from all different age groups. As part of this two Albion College interns have been working diligently to garner survey opinions from seniors around the community.

This survey is part of a grant to bring organizational leaders together to collaboratively work on issues facing community residents and particularly seniors. The goal is to have Albion designated by AARP as an Age-Friendly Community by demonstrating on-going agency collaboration to help find ways to address these issues.

Organizational leaders working together to collaboratively work on issues facing community residents and particularly seniors.

To assist in this effort Albion College interns Dejanay Robinson and Sarah Starkey have been encouraging Albion senior citizens to fill out the survey about their views on various aspects of the community. The survey covers areas including housing, health care, parks and recreation and solicits suggestions for improving services for seniors.

Dejanay is completing her first year as an Albion College AmeriCorps member where she was placed with the Albion Health Care Alliance. She has been working with the AARP grant coordinators Marcia Starkey and Linda Kolmodin on the survey and other aspects of the collaborative effort. From the Orlando area this active student is on the pre-med track majoring in biology and psychology. While in high school she was a member of the National Honor Society and was a dual enrollment student with Poinciana High School and Valencia College. Dejanay is a weight lifter who qualified regionally while attending high school.

As a rising senior Sarah is part of the Build Albion Bonnor Fellows program. An Albion resident, Sarah is a 2020 graduate of Parma Western High School. Majoring in Kinesiology she loves being outdoors. In her spare time when not studying or being part of the Albion Fellows program Sarah loves to spend time with her family. One of her favorite activities is kayaking including on the Kalamazoo River.

In addition to working to gather survey information both interns will be involved in data analysis and in participating in the planning for the collaborative community project to attain Age-Friendly Community status granted by AARP.

As the basis of the grant, leaders in the Albion area are joining together to work on issues facing community residents and particularly seniors. The goal is to have Albion designated by AARP as an Age-Friendly Community by demonstrating on-going agency collaboration to help find ways to address these issues.

The Albion Community Foundation received this grant from the Calhoun County Senior Millage Allocation Committee (SMAC) to help implement steps towards this AARP designation. This grant effort provides a catalyst to educate the community about what changes can be implemented to make Albion more livable for all ages-especially seniors.

The areas to be addressed in combined domains include Outdoor Spaces and Buildings; Housing, Social Inclusion and Communications and Health Services.

In order to achieve AARP Age-Friendly Community designation organizations must commit to a collaborative effort to assess community seniors and work on solutions to improve those identified needs. To help work toward resolution of the most pressing needs, these organizations will work with each other to identify what programs are already in place, what resources are available and what could be cooperatively developed.

The areas to be addressed in combined domains include Outdoor Spaces and Buildings; Housing, Social Inclusion and Communications and Health Services. Transportation will be addressed by the whole committee because this area affects all the domain groups.

Transportation will be addressed by the whole committee because this area affects all the domain groups.

The grant goal is to have a number of workable strategies implemented by the end of 2023 to help earn the Age-Friendly Community designation. A detailed report on the path to those accomplishments will be evaluated by AARP before granting the coveted designation. After the year-long grant, the collaboration effort will continue under the city’s leadership to keep Albion’s Age-Friendly Community designation.