produce to that pantry’s offering. “This neighborhood has so many talented older women. They do so much! And they could do so much more, if I only had the means to manage more of them! Think of the all young people they could teach! Think of
RETHINKING OUR APPROACH
all the hungry people they could feed! But there’s only so much one can do in a one-woman shop, and right now, that’s what this is. Just think of what we could accomplish if I had just a little more help with the load!”
SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS: Sector-by-Sector Recommendations for Action The primary strategies for reducing social isolation among the city’s low-income, marginalized older women have more than proved their merits. The experts’ sector-by-sector recommendations for ongoing and enhanced investment in these strategies included:
FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR: • Continue investing in senior center activities of all types. Pay particular attention to centers that work with – or seek to work with – new immigrants and other under-served populations in their communities. • Provide funding streams encouraging providers to utilize seniors as volunteers in projects in which they support other seniors, young people, community caregivers, and the community as a whole.
FOR THE NON-PROFIT SECTOR: • For providers working in immigrant communities: Examine whether the community’s own beliefs and cultural attitudes are preventing older immigrant women from accessing programs that could benefit them, and begin working to address those attitudes. Wherever possible, incorporate those older women themselves as ambassadors and planners in changing attitudes, reshaping “mainstream” programs, and creating new, tailored efforts.
• For youth providers and aging service providers: Explore potential collaborations that can expand horizons at both ends of the age spectrum, that combine diverse talents and energies for the benefit of the community as a whole, or that tap the energies of young people to help older people – and older people to help younger ones. • For providers working in the LGBT community: Examine whether general community-based social programs are reaching out to, open to – and taking into account the particular needs of – older LBT women, and explore ways that partnership with other senior-serving organizations could open doors for older LBT women within those organizations.
FOR THE PHILANTHROPIC SECTOR: • Convene, work with, and fund leaders of the city’s newer immigrant communities, with LBT communities, and with communities of people with disabilities to increase access to services for the older women in those communities. • Convene, work with, and fund nonprofit leaders working in youth and aging services to create programs that involve these groups in mutually-supportive, mutually-beneficial community projects.
The New York Women’s Foundation
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