Plum Blossom Centre

Multiple Levels of Support to Reduce the Social Isolation of Seniors!

Earlier this year, Innoweave announced the launch of Seniors SI, in partnership with the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP).  Through Seniors SI, Innoweave will help organizations across Canada generate, implement, and scale socially innovative community level approaches to reduce the social isolation of seniors.

Seniors SI provides multiple levels of support to communities looking to build local action plans focused on the outcome of reducing social isolation of seniors in their community. As a starting point to facilitate preliminary discussions, the Seniors SI team held engagement sessions in 9 major Canadian cities and national webinars in French and English. These sessions were attended by city policy makers, local seniors organizations, community service providers, neighbourhood houses, and academia. From these sessions, organizations were able to start the conversation about the current barriers facing their communities, and what solutions and partners would be needed to have an impact on reducing social isolation of seniors. Leveraging the momentum of these preliminary sessions, groups have organized follow up meetings to start to develop their impact plans. Seniors SI supports groups to develop their impact plans in numerous ways including facilitating community connections, providing access to knowledge resources, and delivering direct coaching support.

Seniors SI is already benefitting community organizations across Canada. “The support that Innoweave is offering including expertise in developing the plan and application is incredible. Across our community, Innoweave’s support has helped connect our efforts to combat seniors’ social isolation, to figure out how to build a collective response from each of our unique organizational assets” said Lee Anne Davies, Director of Community Investment at the United Way of Greater Victoria.

Seniors SI began connecting organizations around the issue of senior’s isolation in preparation for the upcoming NHSP Call for Proposals. The call was announced March 27th, by the Honourable Alice Wong, Minister of State (Seniors), and opens May 29, 2015. This call will fund clusters of projects in communities across Canada which are able to effectively demonstrate how they will achieve the outcome of reducing social isolation of seniors.

Using a collective impact model to achieve population level outcomes is a complex but worthwhile endeavour with the potential for generating meaningful large-scale change. The Seniors SI team is excited to assist and guide the development of innovative community approaches to achieve this important social goal.

To learn more about Seniors SI please visit SeniorsSI.ca, or email [email protected] with your questions.

- See more at: http://www.innoweave.ca/blog/innoweaves-new-seniors-si-program/#sthash.toZ2eDy2.dpuf

对不起，此内容只适用于English。

对不起，此内容只适用于English。

对不起，此内容只适用于English。