=
Expand search form

50-year span: Senior center broadens programs to serve wide-ranging interests

By Melissa Wagoner

“Our goal is to be the hub of all things senior and to be all things social,” Silverton Senior Center Executive Director Dodie Brockamp said. With nearly 1,000 visitors to the Center every year, she has a big job on her hands.

“What I look at are the seven dimensions of wellness (physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, environmental and occupational),” Brockamp explained. “I look at that as I’m thinking of program ideas. Then I look at trying things three different ways. By the third time you usually realize – is it going to work or not going to work?”

Although Brockamp has over 30 years of experience as an activities director in long-term care facilities, coming up with programs that will keep the center’s nearly 700 members with a five generation age span engaged can be quite a challenge.

“We have 92 members who are under 60,” Senior Center Board President Darlene Blackstone said. “We have a 50-year span because our youngest member is 50. How do you provide for five decades of needs? We have the paper and pencil generation and then there’s email.”

Blackstone said the biggest challenge since the center dropped its membership age to 50 has been planning around those who still work and making accommodations for those who are tech savvy as well as those who are not. 

“They’re not all old people up here,” Brockamp noted. “They’re really active folks.”

And active people often require a lot of stimulation, which is why Brockamp has been amping up the offerings to include more exercise programs like yoga, Zumba, Tai Chi and line dancing; more resource and educational events, including technology training, gardening, writing and painting; and greater connections with the outside community, including people of all ages, even children. 

“We’re trying to be more multi-generational,” she said. “We’re also trying to work into the community.”

The center’s funding originally came mostly through the City of Silverton. Now it primarily consists of membership dues and private donations but Brockamp is working toward increasing the income from regular facility rentals and attendance at center fundraising events as well. 

“We want people to know that you can rent the facilities and continue to support our Thrift Shop as well,” she said.

But more than anything both Brockamp and Blackstone want Silverton’s estimated 3,000 eligible seniors to know that the Center’s doors are open for resources, recreation or just as a place to hang out. 

“We have people who come up and bring their laptops (we have Wi-Fi) or just sit and read,” Blackstone said. “It’s like a big living room. This just feels like home.”

Previous Article

Timbered timbre: Amphitheater proposed for Coolidge McClaine Park

Next Article

Hope for the New Year: What’s yours?

You might be interested in …

The Forum: Mt. Angel

Dear Mt. Angel Chamber of Commerce: My family and I have visited Mt. Angel Oktoberfest for the past couple of years and thoroughly enjoyed it. We enjoyed it so much that we were making plans to move our family business there… This past holiday weekend we came again because we thought it would be easier to get around when Oktoberfest […]

Food equity – Defining the problem a first step in finding the solution

By Melissa Wagoner Food is necessary for the survival of all humans but that doesn’t mean access to it is always equitable.  In fact, every month within Marion and Polk Counties more than 45,000 individuals – 15,000 of them children – rely on food assistance according to Marion Polk Food Share (MPFS), an organization of which Silverton Area Community Aid […]

The Old Curmudgeon: An important inauguration

By Vern Holmquist In a couple of days we are to see the biggest change in our government we will probably witness in our lifetime (make that my lifetime). We are going to have a different road to travel. We have elected a different president, different in many ways, but we pray he is the right one for the very […]