Living well, aging well and living active were the main topics of conversation at council on Monday night.
The latest installment of the Chatham-Kent Community Development Forum focused on seniors, and the issues facing them across the community.
Cheryl Burrage, the coordinator at the Wallaceburg Adult Activity Centre, was one of the speakers at the event.
Burrage said the goal was to highlight the strategic issues facing everyone in C-K, and how to promote community engagement and build a better Chatham-Kent.
Burrage said she wanted to speak about the importance of the 11 centres located in Chatham-Kent.
“Many of the centres are older, small or have accessibility issues,” Burrage told the Sydenham Current.
“For example, the Wallaceburg location has not elevator and fourteen stairs. We have big accessibility issues here, plus we have a space issue. We need a larger facility. We are trying to make the Municipality realize this is our future. More and more people are getting older and retiring in the area.”
Burrage added in Chatham-Kent, 1 out of 10 people that are over the age of 55 belong to one of these centres and it is growing.
“They are used for a lot of different reasons,” she said. “There are people who live alone and it gives them a purpose or reason to get out of bed in the the morning and get dressed. Other people simply to remain physically active and also nourishment. We have a restaurant that provides fairly reasonable prices and healthy quality food.”
“A lot of people who come to our Birthday lunches or dinners throughout the year, that’s probably a big time for them to get a good meal and be social.”
Council also approved the Age Friendly Chatham-Kent 2015 Community Action Plan on Monday night.
They also approves to have Chatham-Kent register with the World Health Organization and apply to join its “Age-Friendly Cities and Communities Network.”
They also directed staff to investigate the creation of an age friendly advisory committee responsible for coordinating and promoting age friendly initiatives and evaluation activities.
