San Francisco Village News in Print

San Francisco Village News in Print - January 2011

SF Village News

January 2011

In this issue

San Francisco Village offices have moved. We are now at 3575 Geary Boulevard at Arguello, San Francisco, CA 94118. Our phone and FAX numbers remain unchanged.

Holiday Party Pics

Board President, Gayle Geary, honoring founder, donor and member, Glady Thacher, who hosted us for the second year in a row.

The piano duo performance that was our enjoyable entertainment for the evening.

Delectable dishes prepared by Villagers were sampled by the party goers.

Did you leave the Village Holiday Party without your red sweater? We have a woman's red sweater, button front, Norm Thompson label that was left at the recent holiday party. If it is yours, please call the Village office at 415-387-1375 or email Gayle at gayleu@sfvillage.org.

Holiday PAWS

SF Villagers Judy and Don Langley volunteer at PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) by bringing goodies to animals in the Tenderloin district. www.pawssf.org

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From the Editor

A Village Vision for 2011

by Gayle Uchida, Manager of Member Services/Operations

Hi Villagers - We're resending the January 2011 Newsletter due to some technical issues with links - Sorry for the inconvenience.

As we begin this first year of the new decade, we are excited about the future for the Village and growth for the coming year. We've completed our move into the brand-new Institute on Aging senior campus building at 3575 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94118. We are so very lucky that they invited us to be a tenant in their new offices which is just 2 blocks from our old offices. Nothing else has changed and our phone number and FAX remains the same. Please do come by and visit us sometime!

We are pleased to finally announce a name for this monthly newsletter, suggested by a Village service provider, Debra Baida of Liberated Spaces. Thanks to Debra's entry, San Francisco Village News, we have a name that describes exactly what this newsletter is about. It is a vehicle to provide all of you with news about the Village, relevant topics and useful information as San Francisco Village members, partners, service providers and supporters.

January’s theme is VISION. It’s a word with many meanings and it was intentionally chosen for that reason.

Vision commonly refers to sight and January is National Glaucoma Awareness Month. Vision can also be defined as: The act of anticipating that will or may come to be. In any case, we envision another successful year for our Village in 2011in our new home. Your continued support and contribution are keys to making that vision a reality.

I want to close by wishing you all a Happy and Healthy New Year in 2011!

Best,

Best,
Gayle Uchida, Editor and Publisher

Guest Contributor

B's Beef - New Year, New Life, New Me

by B. E. K. Hancock, San Francisco Village Member

If you are like me and wouldn't dream of starting a diet on a Thursday afternoon at 3:22 PM you will appreciate that January 1st is without a doubt the most auspicious date on which to initiate a major life remodel or character facelift.

Ah -- New Year's resolutions! We all make them. We all break them -- at least most of the time. And yet hope springs annually and we sincerely believe that we can, through sheer will power and determination, become a better, smarter and/or thinner human being.

Why do we pick this fight every year with our inner sloth, blocked artist, ineffectual parent or definitely non-svelte spouse? Because we are not cynics!

We are the ones who still believe in ourselves, that in each of us there is the power to make us into better people and perhaps even make the world a slightly better place.

So, bright but not necessarily early on January 1st, go ahead and make that list of promises to yourself: to lose weight by eating nothing white, join a hiking group, dust off your water color set, volunteer at the school next door, never lose your temper or yell at the kids, walk the dog twice a day, clean the garage, give clothes to Good Will every quarter, learn Spanish or Mandarin (i.e. thinking locally or globally), get the car washed more often, contribute to...

Wait a minute!

It took me well over half a century to figure out that "more is less". Anything over at most three resolutions is just a recipe for disappointment and self-loathing. My advice: by all means make your list but keep it short and simple.

The emotional "upper" you will experience as you once again place high hopes on your future will probably last about 48 to 72 hours. Then when reality sets in and you miss that six AM run or devour that double slab of chocolate torte, don't succumb to "all-or-nothing" thinking and give up on yourself. Keep working on setting a general trend. Remember: it takes 21 days to make or break a habit, or so they say.

However, should you really throw in the towel, know that there is a string of Mondays coming up and if all else fails there's always next January 1st.

Happy New Year!

Aging-In-Place In San Francisco: SF Village Inspires Local Policy

by Christabel Cheung, Executive Director

At the close of 2010, San Francisco Village (SFV) was proud to be included in recommendations for better aging-in-place, that were prepared by the Budget and Legislative Analyst for the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco. The report entitled, “Aging in Place and Community: Housing Assistance and Other Services for Seniors in San Francisco,” presents several local issues with SFV named in the related legislative recommendations:

Aging-In-Place Issue: San Francisco seniors would benefit from increased access to personal support and home modification services that enable independence.

• Legislative Option 1: Subsidize SF Village membership fees and service fees for low-income seniors.

• Legislative Option 2: Provide SF Village or a comparable organization with a subsidy from the City to pay for member outreach to targeted demographics such as low-income and immigrant seniors.

The Board of Supervisors directed the Budget and Legislative Analyst, by motion, to conduct a review of existing community practices and resources that might enable San Franciscans to safely remain living in their homes or communities. The report specifically details: (a) demographic information about seniors in San Francisco, (b) the number of seniors on affordable housing and public housing wait-lists, (c) a review of independent senior living programs and models, and (d) legislative recommendations for incentives to encourage property owners to make residential upgrades that increase accessibility and safety for seniors.

Resonant with the village movement, the San Francisco Human Services Agency’s Department of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS) reveals that the majority of San Francisco’s seniors reside in older, multi-level apartments and houses that are not likely to meet their safety and accessibility, and that subsidizing independent living for many seniors in their existing residences could be a sizeable cost savings over options such as subsidizing new residential development or seniors prematurely moving to residency in assisted living facilities.

Inclusion of SFV in these significant legislative recommendations resulted from SFV’s participation on Supervisor Eric Mar’s Aging in Place Task Force. With this recent validation of SFV from local government, we look forward to continued work with the Task Force and future collaborations with organizations throughout the City to help make San Francisco more aging friendly.

The full report can be viewed on the SF Village website - Aging in Place and Community: Housing Assistance and Other Services for Seniors in San Francisco
(The Executive Summary contains all resulting legislative recommendations, and analysis of the village movement begins on page 25 of the report.)

A Clear Vision

by Tom Benet, San Francisco Village Member

Growing older does not necessarily mean having to put up with poor vision. There are recent, revolutionary treatments that are proving effective in reducing the impact of long-resistant ocular ailments such as macular degeneration. But the key to prolonging eye health is prevention. And that is the mission is the mission of an organization headquartered here in San Francisco at 1388 Sutter street, Suite 408, San Francisco, 94109.

It's called Prevent Blindness Northern California and I sat down recently to talk to Program Director April Nakayoshi and Chief Executive Officer Wing-See Leung to get a sense of just what this group - it relies on private funding - is all about. "There are a lot of myths out there," said Nakayoshi, "but the fact is: half of all blindness is preventable." And the critical element in this prevention is early and continued screening. It is critical because many forms of eye disease show few symptoms until the process has reached a vision-damaging stage. Glaucoma has been dubbed "the sneak thief of sight" because there is no pain - and hardly noticeable diminishment of peripheral vision - before the disease has worked its effect.

A recent column by authoritative medical expert Jane E. Brody in the New York Times noted that "low vision and blindness are costly problems in more ways than you might think. In addition to the occupational and social consequences of vision loss, there are serious medical costs, not the least of them from injuries due to falls."

Prevent Blindness was started here about 50 years ago and its aim is to provide cost-effective guidance and support: i.e. offer the gold-standard in screening. Many volunteers are trained to go out into the schools where screening of children, whose eye problems are often undetected, but there is also an Adults' Vision Screening Program that identifies early stages of eye disorders so adults can find treatment. One vision-screening participant, named Angel, noticed recently: "It changed everything because I see much better now. It seems like magic. Thank you to the entire organization."

You can contact Prevent Blindness by phone at 415-567-7500, or view its internet site at www.eyeinfo.org. If you do phone, you won't get a robotic voice or be told to punch a bunch of buttons. You'll get a warm, responsive, human being. As Wing-See Leung puts it: "The sooner we start making health vision a priority, the faster we'll detect diseases that cause vision loss, and the more likely we'll be able to eliminate half of all blindness."

Villages: The Vision is Alive and Growing

by Gayle Geary, Board President

In November, Christabel Cheung and I traveled to Philadelphia for the National Village Gathering. Over 200 people attended, including about 50 villages in operation, 20 villages in development, and a number of organizations that serve the senior population, including AARP, the National Council on Aging, the Scan Foundation, Center for the Advanced Studies of Aging Services (UC Berkeley), the Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging, plus more.

The conference was comprised of panel discussions, open discussions, individual speakers, and lots of networking. Christabel was one of three panelists talking about What Keeps Us Up At Night? Attendees were particularly interested in our 24/7 Friendship Line and our unique offering of group memberships. As a village in operation, we are seen to be very innovative among our peers.

Here are some of the exciting things we learned that will make a difference to the future of San Francisco Village:

The Village Movement has gained significant recognition among the media. Suzanne Braun Levine, author of Fifty is the New Fifty, talked about the second adulthood, a new stage of life that has not existed before. Villages are providing the opportunity of a new lifestyle for this extended adulthood (70 to 90 plus years). We are creating a new model of collaborative and cooperative communities. We are no longer thinking, "rocking chairs on the porch." Importantly, we need to infuse the media in San Francisco with this enthusiasm.

There is widespread agreement that adult children of older parents are very important for the Village Movement. Jane Gross, former NY Times journalist, talked about her own experience with her mother, and encouraged us to reach out to educate this group about the benefits of villages, not just for their parents but for themselves. Her messages would be "peace of mind, an easier life, not having to solve all of your parents' problems alone, and one stop shopping."

There is great diversity in business models among villages, from "volunteer first" villages to hub and spoke models to those serving lower income households to those with parent organizations such as medical centers. San Francisco Village is unique with our tremendous geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. No other village has our challenges and opportunities. Bottom line for all villages: There is passion and commitment among all of us to serve our members with quality services and connections.

The biggest lightbulbs went off during the open discussion about financial sustainability with how we can work with government and existing health care systems – for instance, tapping into Medicare or long term care providers, by recategorizing ourselves in wellness and prevention services. These are just some of the things we might explore in order to get assistance with membership fees from existing organizations. Much more to follow in this area.

If you would like to have more information about the Village Gathering, please contact me at gayle.geary@gmail.com. And if you are not already a member or a volunteer, please join us as we continue on this exciting adventure.

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SF Village Events and Activities

We want you to attend any and all of these and please bring a friend. As we enter fall, we are looking for members to host Lunch Bunch events or start up groups such as knitting, bridge, etc. Any ideas or topics you have for events and activities are always welcomed.

You can easily register to attend any event by clicking on the link listing for that event. You'll need to be registered on the SF Village website in order to register for any calendar events - CREATE AN ACCOUNT HERE if you haven't already. Of course, you can also still call the office at 415-387-1375 or email us at: info@sfvillage.org.