I Am Humans will begin administering a series of community care projects designed to improve the quality of life for older adults. We will disburse $20 per week to one of our program participants. This participant will use these funds to leave her home and enter the community. Either by purchasing food or a tasty treat at a local restaurant, or just visiting local village shops.
These funds will be disbursed to her every Thursday and used every Friday.
Some concerns we have noticed while studying in this field are that our aging participants don’t get out of their homes enough. Some of our staff suggested that, to ensure a good quality of life for our aging population. Our participants must be encouraged to leave their homes and engage with the community.
When we have an established rapport built with community members. Our brain and our resilience to overcoming loneliness, depression, and anxiety seem to dwindle.
For example, when we go into the same coffee shop every day, and the barista greets us by first name and knows our order by memory. What is going in our brain? If not an emotional connection and a sense of belonging and community perhaps even creating the chemical oxytocin in our bodies.
These same mechanisms need to be applied to our aging population. Our participants sometimes have anxiety from stressors in their homes and at times from their spouses. It is not an easy feat to be married to the same person for over 40 years. This is why I Am Humans wants to encourage our aging participants to develop, establish, and build rapport with their local communities once a week. To ensure our aging participants feel loved, appreciated, and recognized by someone other than those they rely on daily, such as a spouse or caregiver.
I Am Humans will be sponsoring a participant with a once-a-week event/outing.
We will note each time this money is disbursed and how the participant is feeling after the outing. We hope that this participant will feel more connected to the community, spend less time ruminating on her loneliness, stop feeling isolated, and spend more time feeling appreciated, seen, and heard by those in her local village/community.