Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Elders as mentors


One of our Kinship mentors, Bruce Westphal, soon to be 70, recently noted how much he and his wife have enjoyed starting up their friendship with a 7 year old boy from their community. He's discovered that it is a wonderful way for them to share of their wealth of wisdom and experience, supplementing the relationships they already have with grandchildren. They are encouraging others from their church, Westwood Lutheran in St. Louis Park, to befriend children from a couple of neighboring public elementary schools, Cedar Manor and Aquila.

You can read Pastor Bruce Westphal's story on page two of the Westwood Lutheran's Celebration publication.

Civic Ventures is an organization dedicated to actively engaging people in the second half of life in tackling serious social problems. Their studies of Americans age 50 to 70 indicate:
  • Most see retirement as a time to begin a new chapter in life by being active and involved, starting new activities, and setting new goals.

  • Two-thirds of those age 50 to 54 are interested in taking jobs now or in the future to help improve the quality of life in their communities.

  • More than three-quarters of those who say they'll work in retirement are interested in working to help the poor, the elderly, and people in need.
http://www.civicventures.org/the_facts.cfm

Nationally MENTOR has just produced a study guide "The wisdom of age" for mentoring programs utilizing older Americans as mentors, and is available for download at the following website, http://www.mentoring.org/news/136/.

Kinship mentoring is an outstanding opportunity to enjoy the benefits of grandparenting without having to go through the much more challenging role of parenting. As our mentors can attest, it also keeps you young!

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