COMMUNITY PARTNERS
PHASE TWO
SOUTH GRANVILLE SENIORS CENTRE
South Granville Seniors Centre came on board in Phase One, implementing several programs and initiatives to help create safe spaces and social engagement for people living with dementia. Their most notable program was the Happy Memories Café, which started out as an opportunity for education, movement, and fun all in one afternoon. In Phase Two, the program evolved into a series of shorter, individual sessions focused on either shared interest activities, brain games, or movement. Participants could choose to go to one or several of the offered sessions, but each activity was held separately and for a shorter period of time, based on participant feedback. The Happy Memories Café in its original form shifted to being held in Spanish in Phase Two (but stayed inclusive of all language speakers keen to participate) and has grown into a place where both people with dementia and their loved ones can meet to socialize, laugh, and have fun together. South Granville Seniors Centre also recently hired a company to make the entire centre dementia inclusive and they are working with the Vietnamese Cognitive Wellness Centre who will be offering dementia-specific services there in the near future. For more information and to get in touch, please visit southgranvilleseniors.ca
KITSILANO NEIGHBOURHOOD HOUSE
In Phase Two of the project, Kits House enhanced and strengthened the Memory Buddy Program they established in Phase One. They recruited a wider cross section of volunteers including younger graduate students with capacity to take buddies on more involved outings, and they increased the frequency of visits clients received. Most clients living with dementia now have an additional buddy or an additional day in the week that they meet their buddy. Kits House also received a United Way grant allowing them to hire a full-time Community Connector to facilitate extending their network and collaborating with other community partners.
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.
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.
A.S.K. FRIENDSHIP CENTRE
In Phase Two of the project, ASK expanded their bus rental program adding more vehicles to the fleet, enhancing the training they offered drivers about interacting with people with dementia, and moving their bus booking system online so scheduling trips would be more convenient for community groups. They’re now in the process of developing a guidebook resource that includes pertinent details about trips they’ve taken like how accessible they are, how long they take, what food options are available, and any extra considerations that might be important.
Dementia
Co-CREATION ACADEMY
The Dementia Co-Creation Academy came on as a community partner in Phase Two of the project and has grown and accomplished so much in a very short period of time. They run a monthly Co-creation Club offering collaborative art-making opportunities to participants, as well as a monthly Hi-Five Club for socialization and recreation. They have also hosted special intergenerational events like a volleyball tournament to raise money to keep their programming going well into the future. The DCCA team embodies and wholeheartedly believes in asset-based community development, so much so that they resisted using BCP’s seed funding, seeking instead to form connections in the community that would be sustainable long term. They call themselves “way farers”, embracing ABCD with a sense of flexibility and openness to opportunities that fall into their path along the way. For more information, please visit dccacademy.ca or follow them on Instagram for updates on programs and activities.
PHASE 1
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.
west point 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.
A.S.K. FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY
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.
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.
SOUTH GRANVILLE SENIORS CENTRE
South Granville Seniors Centre took on several programs and initiatives in Phase One to help create safe spaces and social engagement for people living with dementia. Their most notable one was the Happy Memories Café. This was a space where both people with dementia and their loved ones met to socialize, learn, and have fun together. The program activities evolved based on the ongoing feedback and shifted in Phase Two, but the one part that stayed the same is: everyone is always welcome to participate!
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.
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.