On March 26-29, 6000 people gathered in Washington, DC to attend the annual American Society on Aging and National Council on Aging (NCOA) joint conference. We “boomers and beyond” have become a hot topic. ReServe focuses on the talents, skills and experience of those 50+ and how we can help to solve a range of issues in the social, environmental, educational, justice, housing, arts, and health arenas. As the Executive Director of ReServe, it was great for me to have an opportunity to share with attendees some of our collective accomplishments, which include the following.

ReServe was featured in two workshop sessions: one on our Health Navigator Project and the other on how ReServe has built key collaborative relationships with the City of NY, City University of NY, AARP, and Libraries for the Future to extend the reach of ReServists into new areas. The Health Navigator Project workshop attracted about 20 health care professionals who are grappling with the high costs and care needs of many older adults which they face after discharge from a hospital stay. Our Health Navigators, working in collaboration with Beth Israel and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospitals here in NYC, have completed a training course developed by ReServe and augmented by training in benefits entitlement with a NCOA web-based tool – Benefits Check-Up. The goal of our Health Navigators is to serve as the go-between the hospital and home care services, as well as other community based services, such as transportation, money management, and home delivered meals.

ReServe’s Health Navigators come from a wide range of backgrounds; they need not be social workers. Rather, they need to have an interest in the target population and in problem-solving. The rewards are many: seeing an elderly gentleman with diabetes being more independent because our Health Navigators helped him enroll in the NYS EPIC program to obtain his insulin; a low income Hispanic woman whose Spanish speaking Health Navigator is able to negotiate problems with creditors greatly reducing her stress. The program is in its pilot phase with funding from the MetLife Foundation, the Stella and Charles Guttman Foundation, the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, and Continuum Health Partners. The conference attendees who heard about ReServe’s small pilot were very interested in possible replication in their hospitals – given that this is often a missing service that many believe could begin to save the health care system significant dollars and improve the quality of life for frail elderly adults.

At the second workshop entitled “Civic Engagement Using Stipended Professional Volunteers” – I described ReServe’s operating model and how ReServe has developed collaborations for public sector positions with the City of New York – through the City’s Department for the Aging – and with the City University of New York – through the Chancellor’s Office. Both efforts are groundbreaking and have gotten off to solid starts this year. The City project is now involving about 20 City agencies which have identified 88 positions for ReServists – lawyers, social workers, organizational management and human resources experts, finance and information technology professionals, marketers and writers. The agencies tell us that the ReServists are getting jobs done that would have sat on the backburner for a long time or are new consultative roles to help an agency solve a particular problem.

At CUNY, 15 campuses have requested 48 ReServists to assist with mentoring, writing, development, human resources, and engineering work. ReServists are enjoying being engaged with students in these college settings, and the CUNY supervisors report that ReServists bring maturity and skills that are very helpful to students and to faculty members and administrators.

The AARP collaborations with ReServe are several. The first is in the AARP Money Management Program in which ReServists are the Captains of AARP volunteers who assist on a 1 to 1 basis frail, lower income elderly persons in billpaying and money management. This program now about a year old has proven to be a great fit with ReServists’ skills often from the finance and corporate sectors and volunteers who want a direct service experience.

The second collaboration with AARP is with their relatively new WorkSearch Program – a web based program to assess the interests and skills of job seekers over 40 and to match them with local opportunities. ReServists are serving as Employment Navigators to launch the WorkSearch Program at the Queens Library – working with Libraries for the Future – and with AARP’s office in Denver, Colorado. ReServe Board Member and NYS AARP Director Lois Aronstein has been instrumental in forging these mutually productive collaborations.

Tom Kamber’s organization does what many people think is the impossible: teaching PC skills to New York City’s seniors sector. Kamber is founder and executive director of Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), which reaches out to older adults and draws them into the information age. One of its attractions is a Web site: www.SeniorPlanet.org

By learning PC basics, seniors can search the Iinternet and connect to the digital community of neighbors, friends and family. “If they’re not online, then digital community becomes something only young people can do,” Kamber says. And seniors are great community-builders.

Kamber says OATS is the only organization in the city solely dedicated to helping senior citizens with technology. “It’s all we do,” he says. “We do a variety of different kinds of training programs and we work at 26 different locations across the city.” City Councilmember Gale Brewer has been a major champion of OATS – as the Chair of the Council’s Committee on Technology and as an elected official who is a major advocate of issues affecting New Yorkers over 60.

Since 2004, this nonprofit organization has offered programs at senior centers, community technology labs, and other locations around the city. To date, OATS has served over 3500 older adults and has taught over 3200 sessions of technology training.

OATS does not advertise to find participants. Rather, they work to create partnerships with senior centers, which are natural community hubs of information. Word-of-mouth is their greatest recruiting tool.

OATS currently has ten trainers at 30 sites across the city.
Kamber says the best teachers for OATS aren’t necessarily the techies because his classes want to learn how to use a computer more than how it works. So he looks for teachers who are patient, friendly and interested in working with seniors.

He cites the success of OATS trainer Renee Martinez, a former customer service representative at West Elm. While she was still at the furniture and accessory retailer, Kamber says a customer called to say the slats had not been delivered with the bed.

As related to him: “The woman was really irate, so they put her on with Renee. And Renee was like, ‘Well, we’ve got some slats here on the shelf from another bed. Listen, you’re not too far from me – I’ll just bring them over right now.’

When she arrived, Rene picked the mattress up off the bed and she put the slats down, put the bed back down, and she said, ‘There, I think that’ll work pretty well for you.’ ”The woman was beside herself with joy that somebody actually took care of her problem in a direct and immediate way, and was patient with her, and listened to her concern, and solved it immediately.”

“That kind of ability to communicate is our first concern,” he says.

OATS is helping to train several ReServists in conjunction with their placements at non-profits and civic institutions. Among them is Thai Jason, a ReServist relationship manager at ReServe. She enrolled in a workforce development class to get the training she never had the time or need to acquire in her 27 years of running a firm that produced jingles for advertising. She brings the skills she’s learning back to ReServe, and immediately puts them to use.

Thai’s OATS experience and other stories of bridging the technology divide have been documented in Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap, a book written by OATS board member Rob Salkowitz. (Published by John Wiley & Sons, a Microsoft Executive Leadership Series book.)

Kamber says the Web site, www.seniorplanet.org, is “just getting its own little life. Right now we’ve got about 600 people using it every month, which from a Web site perspective is kind of small, but for a program which serves senior citizens, it isn’t so bad. Then we send calendar blast emails to another 1500, which is really solid.

“But I’d like to see 10,000 users on that a month. I can see them swapping information and commentary and blogs and recipes. I think those are the coolest things that we do, those three areas.”

Can teaching seniors how to text message on their cell phones be far behind?

You can visit the Senior Planet Web site at www.SeniorPlanet.org.

For more on Rob Salkowitz’s book Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap, visit www.generationblend.com

Boomers, Experienced Workers and the Move into Nonprofits: Tell us your stories!

The Conference Board, an independent business research and membership group, is reaching out to learn more about the challenges and successes of boomers and experienced workers, age 50 and over, who have moved, or want to move, from for-profit or government jobs into the nonprofit sector, as well as the experiences of nonprofits that recruit and/or hire boomers and experienced workers from other sectors.

The Conference Board Research Working Group on Managing an Aging Workforce at Nonprofits, part of the Mature Workforce Initiative, is surveying boomers and experienced workers to better understand the key challenges (cultural, generational, intergenerational) they face, and which pathways they find most effective in moving to the nonprofit sector. We’re also surveying nonprofit organizations to better understand how they reach out to this talent pool and which recruitment and “crossover” strategies work best.

If you are an experienced worker who has moved or wants to move into the nonprofit sector from a for-profit or government job, or if your organization has recruited and/or hired experienced workers from these other sectors, we invite you to participate. For the survey going to nonprofit organizations, we would advise a senior level person responsible for human resource policy decisions, including recruitment and hiring practices, to fill this out.

There are the three survey links on nonprofit transitions, which are labeled:

“Employer”—for nonprofit organizations
“Job Seekers”—for individuals seeking nonprofit jobs
“Job Holders”—for individuals who have transitioned into nonprofit jobs

Click on any link above to go directly to the corresponding survey.

For further information, please contact jillcasnerlotto@conference-board.org

Mary Hughes, confidential secretary to Kings County DA Charles Hynes, oversees a trio of talent from ReServe that includes Seymour Herschberg, MD; Nathan (Nat) Fuchs, Esq.; and David Krutchik, former advertising and marketing executive. “I am very impressed with them,” she says. “They are so professional…. We couldn’t hire these people normally.”

Hynes, in his fifth term as district attorney, says his office was under-funded when he got there, and it still is, so he has respect for his legion of volunteers, including the three ReServists.

“They are committed,” Mary says now that they are in place. “They bring initiative. They immediately jumped in and started working.”

These ReServist positions are made possible through a contract with the NYC Department for the Aging in which City agencies are authorized to engage ReServists for six-month consultancy type positions. This is the first such contract for civic engagement with a municipality in the country, said ReServe Executive Director Claire Altman, and “represents very forward thinking by NYC in utilizing the talents of its older citizens to accomplish tasks that would otherwise go undone.”

Herschberg works on medical evidence with the Kings County medical examiner. He is a former hospital administrator and has experience as a legal consultant and in grant writing, insurance, managed care and elder care.

Fuchs, a former corporate attorney who did pro bono work with the Legal Aid Society, and Krutchik, the advertising and marketing executive, are assigned to the Crime Prevention Bureau and specifically to the more than 20 Neighborhood Office programs set up under Hynes’ watch.

Fuchs, in concert with a detective assigned to the DA’s office, is concentrating on elder welfare. They visit senior centers and their directors to assess interest in, and schedule presentations on, personal and financial safety for Brooklyn’s older residents. Earlier Fuchs completed a similar but unrelated program at the Stanley Isaacs Community Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“I’ve been given wide latitude in making the decisions necessary to fulfill my responsibilities,” Fuchs says. He adds, “I’ve thus far found my work to be extremely enjoyable.”

Krutchik, is helping to create an awareness campaign for the DA’s Neighborhood Office program. “The Brooklyn DA has established a high-profile reputation for the crime prevention programs,” he says. Issues range from safe lending and borrowing and safe housing to child protection, drug treatment alternatives and family justice.

While the DA’s office focuses on protecting all residents, Mary says the county’s 400,000 seniors seem most vulnerable. Society as a whole, she says, spends too many of its resources on the young. “But you’re young for such a short period of time.”

“If we don’t think about making growing older a wonderful experience, we’re missing out,” she continues, noting that as a worker the longer you’re in the job, the more perks you get. Yet, in retirement, “the older you get, the fewer perks you get.

“We should celebrate our elders, not penalize them.”

ReServe has begun testing its Health Navigator program at two New York City hospitals aimed at creating a vital link between staff members and patients who might be frail or isolated or need assistance after discharge from the hospital. “In a nutshell, it enables us to stay in touch and minimize emergency situations,” Patrick Inniss, director of social work at St. Luke’s Hospital uptown, said. “Too often patients lose contact because no one is investigating how they are managing in the community.”

Navigators will be the “eyes and ears” for hospital social workers and will be advocates for clients. “The idea is to identify those who lack sufficient social support to navigate the health care system, which in this day and age is more and more difficult,” Beatrice Maloney said. She is the supervisor of geriatric services in the department of social work and home care at Beth Israel Medical Center downtown. She and Inniss are the top go-to’s for Laurie Hyman, ReServe’s Health Navigator Coordinator,who developed the program with Jess Geevarghese, ReServe’s program officer who focuses much of her attention on elder-to-elder projects.

There are many services for the infirm and elderly, but Claire Haaga Altman, executive director of ReServe, said that Health Navigators is unique in that it “is a unique opportunity for ReServe and our hospital partners, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Beth Israel, to test the proposition that if assistance is provided to individuals discharged from hospitals to help them get the concrete services they need, they can remain in their own homes longer and avoid unnecessary hospital stays and emergency room visits.”

Another variation on health navigation in ReServe’s portfolio of projects is the Patient Navigator Project at NY Presbyterian’s Allen Pavilion where two ReServists, Chinmayee Chakrabarty and Maria Hermans, call patients who have been discharged the previous day to make sure they are managing at home well. This project has significant potential for growth and is poised to be an important link in the discharge process at NY Presbyterian.

Henriette Arzewski and Karol Stonger are assigned to St. Luke’s, and Judy Capel and Natalie Millner are the first team at Beth Israel. Both hospitals are part of the Continuum Health Partners Inc. Volunteers will visit client homes once a week and follow up with phone calls, looking for signs of physical, financial or emotional distress or well-being and assessing any safety issues. “Visits in the home might minimize emergency situations by providing assistance, helping to apply for benefits, making clinic appointments, preventing isolation and providing emotional support,” Inniss said.

The Health Navigators’ pilot project is funded by Continuum Health Partners, the MetLife Foundation, the Stella and Charles Guttman Foundation and the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation. The Fan Fox Samuels Foundation provides wrap around support for ReServe’s Elder to Elder Projects.

ReServe has begun testing its Health Navigator program at two New York City hospitals aimed at creating a vital link between staff members and patients who might be frail or isolated or need assistance after discharge from the hospital. “In a nutshell, it enables us to stay in touch and minimize emergency situations,” Patrick Inniss, director of social work at St. Luke’s Hospital uptown, said. “Too often patients lose contact because no one is investigating how they are managing in the community.”

Navigators will be the “eyes and ears” for hospital social workers and will be advocates for clients. “The idea is to identify those who lack sufficient social support to navigate the health care system, which in this day and age is more and more difficult,” Beatrice Maloney said. She is the supervisor of geriatric services in the department of social work and home care at Beth Israel Medical Center downtown. She and Inniss are the top go-to’s for Laurie Hyman, ReServe’s Health Navigator Coordinator,who developed the program with Jess Geevarghese, ReServe’s program officer who focuses much of her attention on elder-to-elder projects.

There are many services for the infirm and elderly, but Claire Haaga Altman, executive director of ReServe, said that Health Navigators is unique in that it “is a unique opportunity for ReServe and our hospital partners, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Beth Israel, to test the proposition that if assistance is provided to individuals discharged from hospitals to help them get the concrete services they need, they can remain in their own homes longer and avoid unnecessary hospital stays and emergency room visits.”

Another variation on health navigation in ReServe’s portfolio of projects is the Patient Navigator Project at NY Presbyterian’s Allen Pavilion where two ReServists, Chinmayee Chakrabarty and Maria Hermans, call patients who have been discharged the previous day to make sure they are managing at home well. This project has significant potential for growth and is poised to be an important link in the discharge process at NY Presbyterian.

Henriette Arzewski and Karol Stonger are assigned to St. Luke’s, and Judy Capel and Natalie Millner are the first team at Beth Israel. Both hospitals are part of the Continuum Health Partners Inc. Volunteers will visit client homes once a week and follow up with phone calls, looking for signs of physical, financial or emotional distress or well-being and assessing any safety issues. “Visits in the home might minimize emergency situations by providing assistance, helping to apply for benefits, making clinic appointments, preventing isolation and providing emotional support,” Inniss said.

The Health Navigators’ pilot project is funded by Continuum Health Partners, the MetLife Foundation, the Stella and Charles Guttman Foundation and the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation. The Fan Fox Samuels Foundation provides wrap around support for ReServe’s Elder to Elder Projects.

ReServist Paul Katz (pictured) has a hard time keeping his seat. He’s on his feet in his office at LaGuardia Community College, exclaiming, “I’ve seen the future!”

ReServist Paul Katz has a hard time keeping his seat. He’s on his feet in his office at La Guardia Community College, exclaiming, “I’ve seen the future!”

Paul sidles over to his desk and perches on the edge of his chair. He illustrates almost everything he says by pulling up a photo on his computer.

He’s excited about a small black digital camera.

“I’ve been shooting pictures for almost 60 years. I’ve shot combat, portraits, still life, stock photos. But this is the best camera I’ve ever had.”

Paul confounds stereotypes of retirees. His laughter booms across the room as he refers to himself as a “geezer.” He has no reticence in giving his age—he’s 72.

“I was an Army officer for 14 years. Infantry, some armor. And then as my photo skills improved, I asked for and received a branch transfer to the signal corps and became a photo officer. Best-kept secret in the Army! Took me to both Poles, North and South.

“I went on to support the White House Photo Office. I was supernuminary to the White House photo officer during the Kennedy and Johnson eras.

“By ’78 I had my own commercial studio here in the City. I shot a lot of book covers, magazine illustrations. A whole series of photos on Puerto Rican rum.

“And strange as it sounds, I also took per diem jobs with the U.S. Marshall’s Service all the way through the 90’s, running down the street—‘Get that guy! Get that guy!’ It wasn’t until I was 65, still wrestling someone down to the ground that I ever thought, ‘I’m getting too old for this!’ about anything.”

But Paul says he’ll never put his camera down.

“I’m an artist. And artists don’t retire. You do it! If I didn’t get paid for photography, would I still do it? Yes! This is my passion.” And passion brought him to ReServe.

“There’s a certain point where you don’t want to just sit at home in front of the television. I saw this little ad about ReServe in The Wire, which is a newspaper on Roosevelt Island where I live. I came in for the interview and they said, ‘La Guardia Community College needs a photographer.’ And here I am.

“Basically, I can shoot anything they need – pictures of students, photography classes. We did a series of big posters for bus shelters that I shot with this camera. They were recruiting posters for students. In fact there’s a smaller version right here . . .”

And just like that, Paul’s off his chair again, rustling through a pile of colorful prints across the room.

Katz’s post at LaGuardia is made possible by a commitment from CUNY Chancellor Matt Goldstein to engage 50 ReServists in positions across the CUNY campuses. The project began in October and ReServe is over halfway there in matching talented ReServists with CUNY’s needs.

A sample of Paul Katz’s photographs can be viewed at our flickr site

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reserveinc/

You can jump directly to Paul’s gallery by clicking here.

http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/104196/Wanted:-Volunteers

“All children, including those who are chronically ill or physically challenged, have the right to live in safe, loving, and permanent family homes. [Our] mission is to provide innovative, high quality services in support of birth, foster, and adoptive families who are caring for children with special medical needs at home. Working primarily with children whose birth families live in poverty, NAC seeks to enable them to remain in, or return to, their homes whenever possible, or to be adopted by loving families when necessary.”
–from the New Alternatives for Children (NAC) mission statement

Former ReServist Steve Walton (pictured below, left) sits in his small, well-lit office. He is explaining the work he does with NAC.
“I came in to design the client tracking database we needed,” Steve says, “but never had.”

Chris Strnad (pictured here sitting beside Steve), NAC’s Director of Evaluation and Research, describes the impact Steve’s involvement has had on the lives of the children and families NAC assists:
“Prior to Steve coming, the agency had no integrated database that could track information centrally on all the families with whom we’re working—nor, crucially, the progression of families through the different programs we offer.”

NAC provides five major programs, including in-house medical and mental health clinics. Their offices fill three floors of a major building in midtown Manhattan.

“Last week our Executive Director called Steve up and said ‘Can you give me a list of all of our clients’ siblings, and where they are?’ It took him maybe 10 minutes. His work has changed how we are able to manage our programs, how we are able to target services. We’re just able to track information much more completely and much more quickly.

“Although it had its moments of technical achievement, my previous work,” as a freelance software designer, “was entirely business-oriented. One client for many years was a major advertising agency. Others did consulting work involving chemical companies and refineries. They had their moments technically, but it’s not quite the same as being able to contribute to the benefit of these kids and their families.

“And that’s a welcome opportunity for me too, because I have no kids of my own, and very little experience of being up close to kids. So this is really the best way for me to do something for them. And I’m very glad of it.”

Steve leans back in his chair and smiles. “And actually, for background music while you’re working, kids playing isn’t bad!”

Reception for “Above Ground,” a Report on NYC Aging Artists by The Research Center for Arts and Culture, Teachers College Columbia University
Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Steven Brezzo, Director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, seemed to joke about the study’s title in his opening remarks. “I thought it was ironic—every New York artist I know of is aging!” But his intent was earnest, as he was quick to clarify: “This topic is of particular importance to all of us who live and make art in New York City.”

Attendee Carolyn Smith was surprised that the event was taking place at Sotheby’s. She didn’t know the story of what is arguably New York’s most famous art auction house.

“Sotheby’s! I thought this was a place to eat!” she laughed. “But they got something here for everyone.”

The title, it turned out, came from an interviewer asking a 97-year-old New York artist, “How are you today?”
To which the artist replied, “Well, I’m above ground.”

The title could be reflective of one of the study’s findings: that some of New York’s older artists can feel overlooked, like a community “underground.” In this light, its publication could be seen as an unearthing.

For the study, a broad sampling of NY artists was interviewed in Spanish, Chinese, or English. The results were published in all three languages as well.

Artist Resource Tables were set up in the reception area for artists in attendance. ReServe was among them.

Theodore S. Berger (Project Director of the Urban Arts Initiative, and Executive Director of New York Creates – and pictured, 2nd from top) said in his remarks, “I am proudly 67, and I’ve been working in the Arts Community for 35 years. I’ve been dreaming of a project like this since I was a much younger man. I retired in 2005 from over 30 years as Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and I am pleased to say I am still going strong—working, as my wife reminds me, more than full time now in my ‘Golden Years’.”

Joan Jeffri (Director of the Research Center for Arts and Culture, Teachers College Columbia University) explained that the survey found that “Artists are very egalitarian.

“Being an artist is a master identity that transcends race” and many other of forms of typical social stratification, including income, for all but the most wealthy artists.

NY artists Norman Messiah and Goldie Yorke (pictured, above) were among the attendees. Said Mr. Messiah, “I didn’t know what to expect.”

NY artist China Marks (pictured, below) was eager to discuss what set the arts community apart. After hearing Joan’s comments, she wrote on the comment board: The difference between aging artists and other aging populations of free-lancers, retirees, etc. is that artists must make art—that’s why we do it—it gives meaning + structure to our lives—other people don’t necessarily have that.

“Art makes us a different animal,” she explained afterwards. “I’m somebody who’s been a freak all my life. I could’ve been anything but I had to do this!”

Not all of the artists represented at the reception considered themselves professionals. Some were hobbyists, and happy to keep it that way. Painter Beverly Taylor said, “I just paint a little. People, landscaping, whatever. But I want to keep my paintings to myself. They’re like my children.”

In her comments, Joan Jeffri indicated that the research team was eager to extrapolate their findings onto the larger society, to see what trends might be gleaned. Their team recommended that “work” and “retirement” be redefined.
One of their most significant findings, according to Ms. Jeffri, was that “Artists don’t retire. No one ever talked about giving up. When they encounter problems, they change media, but they keep working.”

ReServe understands this about artists. We offer them paid, public, socially engaged opportunities to expand their work in new and unexpected ways.

NY artist Jeff Berman talks with Adeena Besdin, Director of Training and Education, Elders Share the Arts – http://www.elderssharethearts.org/