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The Aging, Their Communities and Harnessing Senior Power

By Laura Knoy on Friday, April 13, 2007.

There's a positive side to an aging state! Seniors have more time to volunteer, be politically active and use their years of institutional knowledge to teach and assist historical societies. A new report finds too that the older generation leads all other generations in their input to a community's social capital. But the relationship between the elderly and their community must be symbiotic; they can only help their communities; if their communities make themselves accessible to the elderly in terms of transportation, services and access to restaurants and the arts. Today we wrap up our series looking at this aging demographic's relation to their communities, and how communities can harness this growing amount of "senior power".


Guests

  • Lew Feldstein, president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, which sponsored a new research report on the state of social capital in New Hampshire, and co-author of a book on social capital, Better Together: Resorting the American Community
  • Martha Bauman, columnist on aging for the Keene Sentinel and on health issues and senior life for New Hampshire Magazine; former chair of the Monadnock Area Committee on Aging and former director of the Monadnock RSVP program for eight years
  • Nancy Spater - Director of Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (R.S.V.P.) for Merrimack County
  • TBA
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