COMMUNITY PARTNERS
PHASE 2
Sunshine Coast Resource Centre & Gibsons Seniors Society
Sunshine Coast Resource Centre (SCRC) is a “one stop shop” for community, social, and government services located in Sechelt, BC. They provide programming, information, and referrals in their community, and have formed a working partnership with Gibsons Seniors Society (GSS) who operates out of Harmony Hall in Gibsons, BC. Gibsons Seniors Society is “a volunteer organization, with several hundred members… [They] provide activities, services, and resources to support the health and well-being of seniors in their local community.” The two groups have banded together to make their community and the activities it offers more inclusive of people with lived experience of dementia.
KITSILANO NEIGHBOURHOOD HOUSE
KNH was a community partner in phase one of the project and is equally committed to phase two. They hosted an intern from the Netherlands in 2022 named Iris Brouwer who organized an intergenerational storytelling event that was a huge success. It was an “everyone welcome” event geared at kids featuring author Fiona Tinwei Lam who read her book “Rainbow Rocket” and spoke about themes of memory loss in an age-appropriate way. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
A.S.K. FRIENDSHIP CENTRE
ASK Friendship Centre was a community partner in phase one of the project and is committed to continuing the work in phase two. This adult day centre plans to expand cultural connections, recruit more volunteers, increase creative programming offerings and carry on with their van rental program.
DUNBAR RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION
The Dunbar Residents Association piloted several dementia-focused initiatives during phase one of the project, including a gardening workshop series, a project known as The Fireweed Club on which they collaborated with South Granville Seniors Centre, and Kits Neighbourhood House), and a neighbourhood asset mapping project that laid out where parks and park benches in the area were located to encourage seniors to get out safely for walks and visits during COVID lock downs. They plan to pick up where they left off for phase two, increase capacity through recruitment of people with lived experience and other volunteers, and shift the conversation about dementia to more of a community focus, reducing stigma in the process.
PURPLE ANGELS
The Purple Angels is a unique, Maple Ridge, BC-based support and activity group for people living with dementia and their families. The group’s founder and facilitator, Myrna Norman, who has been living with dementia for over thirteen years, created the group based on the Purple Angels Global principle that dementia is not a single person issue; it’s a family and community issue affecting more than just the person with the diagnosis. The group does a wide variety of activities together including some educational discussion, outings to cultural and social destinations, and seasonal celebrations like Oktoberfest and Chinese New Year. They’ve been gathering twice a month in the common room of Myrna’s Fraser View seniors’ complex for years and recently Myrna added two more groups into the mix for a total of six sessions per month. The two newer groups are steadily growing.
SOUTH GRANVILLE SENIORS CENTRE
South Granville Seniors Centre has taken on several programs and initiatives to help create safe spaces and social engagement for people living with dementia. Their most notable one is the Happy Memories Café. This is a space where both people with dementia and their loved ones can meet to socialize, learn, and have fun together. The program activities evolve based on the ongoing feedback of participating members, and may include expert engagement, group discussions, music, poetry, and the arts. Everybody is welcome to participate and South Granville Seniors Centre hopes to be able to offer a Spanish speaking group. SGSC was a community partner in phase one and they are eagerly continuing into phase two!
Burnaby Neighbourhood House
Burnaby Neighbourhood House (BNH) is a community-driven, community-funded agency whose goal is to create more inclusive spaces within their programming for people with dementia and for those experiencing mental health issues. Their monthly Dementia Friendly Café is a two-hour event, hosted at two locations. It offers social time, educational presentations, and a variety of therapeutic activities, as well as support both for people living with dementia and their care partners. Their Seniors’ Memory Club happens three times a month and is a less formal opportunity for people with lived experience and their care partners to enjoy social and exercise activities and have fun. Lastly, they run a day program for people who are further along in their journey with dementia. As a new community partner with the Building Capacity Project, their plan is to create a strategy for rolling out consistent dementia education across the region.
PHASE 1
WESTSIDE SENIORS HUB (WSH)
The Westside Seniors Hub (WSH) is a volunteer community organization led by a senior Hub Council located in the Westside of Vancouver. The WSH formed a collaborative community partnership with the Building Capacity Project’s Vancouver research team for phase one of our project called Dementia Ventures. Their focus was ensuring effective collaboration and knowledge exchange between 14 partner organizations who were planning, implementing, and evaluating new grass-roots social programming initiatives aimed at building meaningful participation by people living with dementia. They were a vital hub for the partners through those first four years and they continue to support and connect community groups throughout the Westside to date.
KITSILANO NEIGHBOURHOOD HOUSE
KNH was a community partner in phase one of the project and is equally committed to phase two. They hosted an intern from the Netherlands in 2022 named Iris Brouwer who organized an intergenerational storytelling event that was a huge success. It was an “everyone welcome” event geared at kids featuring author Fiona Tinwei Lam who read her book “Rainbow Rocket” and spoke about themes of memory loss in an age-appropriate way. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
A.S.K. FRIENDSHIP CENTRE
ASK Friendship Centre was a community partner in phase one of the project and is committed to continuing the work in phase two. This adult day centre plans to expand cultural connections, recruit more volunteers, increase creative programming offerings and carry on with their van rental program.
westpoint grey united church
West Point Grey United Church got involved with The Building Capacity Project near the end of Phase One, hosting a series of workshops on brain health and memory loss in both English and Mandarin for their bi-cultural congregation, as well as organizing several Dementia Ventures training sessions using the Flipping Stigma Toolkit as a jumping off point. They have come on board as an official community partner in phase two of the project and will be working closely with our Community Research Coordinator and the rest of the BCP team to grow their dementia inclusive programming going forward. They hope to incorporate support groups and continuous dementia training into their community.
SOUTH GRANVILLE SENIORS CENTRE
South Granville Seniors Centre has taken on several programs and initiatives to help create safe spaces and social engagement for people living with dementia. Their most notable one is the Happy Memories Café. This is a space where both people with dementia and their loved ones can meet to socialize, learn, and have fun together. The program activities evolve based on the ongoing feedback of participating members, and may include expert engagement, group discussions, music, poetry, and the arts. Everybody is welcome to participate and South Granville Seniors Centre hopes to be able to offer a Spanish speaking group. SGSC was a community partner in phase one and they are eagerly continuing into phase two!
DUNBAR RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION
The Dunbar Residents Association piloted several dementia-focused initiatives during phase one of the project, including a gardening workshop series, a project known as The Fireweed Club on which they collaborated with South Granville Seniors Centre, and Kits Neighbourhood House), and a neighbourhood asset mapping project that laid out where parks and park benches in the area were located to encourage seniors to get out safely for walks and visits during COVID lock downs. They plan to pick up where they left off for phase two, increase capacity through recruitment of people with lived experience and other volunteers, and shift the conversation about dementia to more of a community focus, reducing stigma in the process.
PACIFIC SPIRIT UNITED CHURCH
Congregation members at Pacific Spirit United Church worked as a committee to create an insightful four-part series looking at dementia from a community perspective. It’s called Beacon *shining light on Dementia, and it is available online. One of their team members, Sabina Harpe, attended our project celebration in March 2023 to share some of the other initiatives they had developed including an additional online series focused on growing old (Beacon *shining light on growing old), “Books and Bistro,” a unique book club open to members of their community, and a special book collection in the church library focused on aging.