Heliopolis Elderly Center

The pandemic brought many challenges to the Heliopolis Elderly Center and one of them was how to help Seniors work on anguish, anxiety, fears, and uncertainties. In this sense, we designed an action plan based on two strategic lines focused on a systemic approach to boost the processes of active aging and quality of life. The Heliopolis Elderly Center has over 150 Seniors participating in over a dozen activities at the Center.

We readjusted the Physical Activity Center into an Online Activity Center. Our face-to-face rooms became virtual rooms and we had to bring other intentionalities to the physical and mental health workshops, thinking about the whole context left behind by the social isolation, brought on my Covid-19.

Body in Movement and Mind in Movement were the two strategic lines created to reformulate the isolated workshops for dance, pilates, gymnastics, physical conditioning, digital literacy inclusion workshops, as well as literacy and learning, and arts and crafts. In 2020 there we held over 300 face-to-face activities with our Senior population. Now in 2021, we provide on-line activities five days per week and a total of 28 distance activities per month at the Heliopolis Elderly Center.

One of our Seniors said, "I had no idea that I could have so many amazing classes and experiences on the phone (facetime), my grandson also lets me use his laptop for literacy and dance lessons!" As you can see our Seniors are taking full advantage of all the online activities offered by the Heliopolis Elderly Center! It has been a challenging few months but with hard work and your generous donations, we have been able to make a difference for the Seniors of this beautiful community.