Peoria is the largest city in Illinois without a senior wellness and activity center.
Earlier this month, Mayor Rita Ali issued a proclamation recognizing National Senior Center Month.
Peggy Jacques, the founder and executive director of Graceland Center for Purposeful Aging, is spearheading a push to get a senior center built in Peoria.
In an interview with WCBU, Jacques explains the reasons behind the effort.
What is the role of the Graceland Center for Purposeful Aging? What services does it provide, and where does it operate from?
Jacques: Right now, we're renting space at the Life Together Center (3625 North Sheridan Road), and we are creating programming for wellness for seniors, for any older adult over the age of 50. Most of our patrons are over the age of 65 and retired. But we're working to create a senior center for Peoria.
Peoria is the eighth largest city in Illinois, and we are the only one in the top 10 that doesn't have a wellness center. Wellness centers mean that people come and learn; they can exercise, they find out about resources, and probably the biggest component is socializing. They get a chance to make friends and go out to lunch together and that kind of thing.
Where do those efforts stand then to actually get a dedicated senior center for Peoria?
Jacques: Well, last year at our first proclamation from the mayor, when we got our first September for Senior Center Month, we had just gotten two big grants: One from the Central Illinois Agency on Aging; they were rescue funding; and then we got some money from the Community Foundation of Central Illinois. So that got us jump-started; we've done 48 weekly programs and six satellite programs.
Those grants are finished, so now we're applying for other grants and we have quite a few donations. Our goal eventually is to get some city investment because there's 30,000 people in Peoria that are over the age of 50 and 20,000 that are over the age of 65, so it's a much bigger issue than we can tackle. But we're certainly going to keep doing weekly programs and continue our fundraising and continue serving the people that want to come and learn how to age well in place.
When you say, “wellness programming,” what does that look like right now? What are some of the things you do?
Jacques: We try to do holistic health; we'll do mental, emotional, physical health. So, we'll have some weeks where we'll have a speaker that will be on how to maintain your balance, or how to keep your muscles strong to avoid falling. Another week, we’ll have some cognitive exercises for people to stimulate their brain and make sure that their memory stays sharp. We try to make sure that it's also a place they can learn about resources and connect to them.
What would a standalone senior center facility be able to do that you currently can't when you're renting spaces?
Jacques: I wish that we could have people see those (other) senior centers in action. The Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) in Bloomington-Normal is a beautiful example. It's really a 9-to-5 – or even sometimes on the weekends – hang-out place, so people can come and go as they like. So, the goal is to have a resource center, a hub where people can come and congregate.
If I'm not mistaken, that ARC center that you referenced in Bloomington-Normal, it used to be Illinois State's rec center and they converted it into (a senior center). Would that be something that would be a possibility in Peoria, if you're looking at certain locations?
Jacques: Absolutely. Our goal would be to have something like that, and the ARC is funded by township monies which are city tax dollars. So it's our goal that somehow – either through the park district, city council, township – some kind of deeper state funding would support it so that we could have a five-day-a-week center open.
What other challenges would it take to get a senior center developed? What more would you need – aside from funding?
Jacques: Truly, I think it's marketing; it's helping people understand, because if you've never seen one people think it's a residential place or they think it's an adult day care, or they don't understand that it's to promote aging well in place. So I think once people get that idea, they’re (saying), “of course. Why would we not have that?” So I think besides funding, it's understanding what we're doing.
When one considers how many other cities have one already, I think that speaks to itself. Communities want this kind of programming. The Central Illinois Agency on Aging funded us to get started; they currently don't have additional grants for us right now, but we're hoping that the Illinois Department of Aging would be able to, at some point, be able to fund some of our programming, because they do in other parts of the of the state.
Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker put out a proclamation, it's an executive order, to have a multi-sector planning to address aging in Illinois. So it's a big issue for all the entire world, actually; I mean, people are aging. But also it just makes sense to have programs for people that are getting older, because we want them to stay as healthy as possible and live life as fully as possible until they're not able to.
