SENIORS
SENIORS
Sue Lash, left, along with a group of women living in Province and Maricopa Wells Middle School students partnered up to give gift bags full of holiday goodies to special needs students.
advanced directives packets will be available at the AG’s table in the Pine Room. Also new this year will be the chance to win one of several very nice door prizes that have been assembled with you in mind. Generous donations from members of the city council will help to ensure a good selection of door prizes. Deposit your event passport at the Senior Advisory Committee table when you leave the event to participate in the drawing. IF YOU GO What: Senior Info/Expo When: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Jan. 20 Where: Maricopa Library and Cultural Center How much: Free Ron Smith is a senior advocate, a member of the Senior Advisory Committee and a CAPS/ CLIPP™ certified aging-in-place planner.
learning how to reach out for supportive services like palliative or hospice care, and navigating dementia. We will have three workshop sessions provided by the Office of the Arizona Attorney General. The workshops will focus on advanced directives. The AG’s office will provide copies of its Life Care Planning packet for all attendees. The workshops will focus on why advanced directives are important and how to complete the packet. Presenters will also explain how the Arizona Healthcare Directives Registry works and why it is important. For those wanting to reserve a spot in one of the three workshops, visit the city’s ActiveNet system to preregister. The workshops are hourly starting at 9 a.m. Jan. 20. Automatic waitlists will be created if demand requires them. On the morning of the event, any remaining workshop seats will be filled from the wait list or on a first-come-first-served basis. There is no charge for these workshops, but each session is limited to just 22 seats. Extra
OU MAY HAVE BEEN wondering where I have been for a while. I wish I could say my wife and I were off on a grand cruise around the world! My distraction has been local, but still an adventure. Last summer, Maricopa City Council refocused the goals of its Age-Friendly Advisory Committee. As a result, we have a new name — the Senior Advisory Committee — and new tasks to achieve. One of those tasks is our role in the annual senior info/expo event. Instead of just providing recommendations and support to city staff, this year, the whole event is planned by the committee with support from city staff. This has been both an exciting and challenging task. For starters, we couldn’t use the Copper Sky Recreational Center as our venue. No problem! After all, we have more than 300 years of combined work experience and a few ideas of our own. As a very young city, we don’t really have a lot of choices other than Copper Sky, but Copper Sky’s recreational programming has been so successful shutting it down for an event has become quite unfair to its patrons. We are fortunate to have another facility designed to accommodate city events — the Maricopa Library and Cultural Center. This year's event — the eighth annual — comes with one big change. At this new venue, we are no longer able to provide free lunch for attendees. However, our new venue provides a comfortable room suitable for professional presentations. So, we will offer presentations from four industry specialists on scams and fraud directed at seniors, ways to reduce heart problems through preventative practices, Y What you need to know about this year’s senior expo BY RON SMITH
InMaricopa.com/Columnists
special that they continue to do this every year.” Another ESS teacher, Courtney Turpen, told her students the gift bags were prepared “with a lot of love, a lot of time and lot of effort.” Students in one of the classrooms greeted McIntire and fellow Province women organizer Linda Helmer with thank-you cards they created in class one school day just before Christmas break last month. “We get large manila envelopes filled with thank-you notes,” Helmer explained. “We read through each and every one of them.” Every year, six or seven women from Province meet several times throughout the holiday season to sew the bags. It takes an estimated 20 to 30 minutes to create each one. The fabric is all donated, but the women purchase the contents. They gather later to pack the bags, which this year included a pencil, fruit roll-up, Play-Doh, chocolate kisses, marshmallow treats and M&M’s. Gindiri, who hails from Nigeria, said the generosity of the Province women extends well beyond city limits. In a separate project, the women compiled school supplies, hygiene items, flip-flops, toys and other items for delivery by missionaries going to her West African home country. “They are reaching out across the globe,” Gindiri shared. “These are kids living in huts. It is wonderful what these women do.”
20236 N. John Wayne Pkwy., Ste. 100 Maricopa, AZ 85139
Sew far, sew good Seniors handmake gifts for needy children BY TOM SCHUMAN
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“It’s just a blessing, all of this coming together,” said Joan McIntire, one of the Province residents who plans the annual effort. “We just want to keep Christ in Christmas.” Shalom Gindiri, an Exceptional Student Services (ESS) teacher at the middle school, said there are eight special education classrooms at Maricopa Wells. While top-performing academics and athletes frequently steal the spotlight, she noted that “often the special education kids are not recognized. It is so
he holiday season is filled with traditions. An unlikely one exists in the city between some of the youngest and eldest residents
— a group of women living in the Province community and Maricopa Wells Middle School. For the seventh consecutive year, these senior ladies sewed gift bags — 240 of them — and filled each with holiday goodies for special needs students at the school. It is an undertaking that fulfills all involved.
• All major insurance is accepted including Medicare, Medicaid (AHCCCS) and TRICARE; or discount programs are available if you are uninsured.
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InMaricopa.com | January 2024
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January 2024 | InMaricopa.com
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