an article of Ana Santaolalla
Project Manager
of and Project Megara
I sit in my office, any given Monday of any given week, and I find myself face to face with the planning for that week.
TUESDAY, JUNE 12
Today is our last day of intervention of the pilot project “Alzheimer’s for children. that throughout the year we have been doing with the General Hospital of Villalba and the Santa Quiteria School.
Two important objectives of this project. The first seems to be evident right away: help children understand the disease, its symptoms and the changes it can cause in the behavior of the elderly and in how they feel. In this way they can also take responsibility for the care of the elderly, understand him and know how to help him.
Our second objective, equally or more important, the empowerment of the elderly who participate in this and the rest of the activities we carry out with the community. Empowerment because they feel firsthand that they are an active part of it. They are awakened agents, they are the main protagonists of the activities.
We went to school with them so that the children received the most technical information from the neurologist, Francisco Javier Pardo Moreno, from the HGV, but also human formation, from their own life experiences, which they shared there in the classrooms with the children. older with mild cognitive impairmentable to explain what it is like to live “with a cloud in the head that no longer lets them remember everything”.
Incredible to see them there, I remember now. What a great opportunity. Empowered, looking at the children in the face, telling them about their personal resources on which they rely to deceive oblivion. Conchi showed a note, in the shape of a cheat sheet, in which the elevator buttons were written down, with their floor numbers and colors, and with the offices, rooms, etc. that she has in each of them and that she consults daily when she can’t remember. where is his room, the medical office or the dining room. Great for her when she finished, she proudly comments, “I think I have done well and that I have been able to explain to them how I am lost sometimes”.
Juan can no longer go to school without the little ones, who have also participated in the activities, throwing themselves around his neck and calling him “Grandpa Juan”. He was in charge, in one of the sessions, of sitting next to him and reading the story to them. “The forgetfulness of grandfather Pedro”.
Also with these children, in another session of the project, we played to imagine that they were the grandchildren of that grandfather and we made labels for him, naming those important objects in a house, which in the different rooms could help him identify what at some point they do not find or do not recognize. Thus, a group of children worked on “labeling” the objects in the kitchen; another, of a room; others, those in the bathroom: “toothbrush (and they did the drawing), towel, shoe rack… and there was one, you’re going to laugh, that he labeled Juan himself.
In this way, children have fun while integrating and understanding the need for support and help for the elderly with this disease, as well as different ways to make life easier for them.. In this way, Juan continues to feel vitalis integrated into an innovative activity that, moreover, requires prolonged preparation over time, which keeps you connected with the other agents in your community. We achieve activity, responsibility in the preparation and setting of medium-term objectives. I have so much ahead of me! I have so much to teach! I have so much to live for!…
FRIDAY, JUNE 15
40 10-year-old children, from a school in Alpedrete, come, as they have been doing for many years now, to say goodbye to the school year and to the elders of Los Llanos, until next September when we meet again, after the holidays. They camp here in Los Llanos and we spend the night around camp games and fireworks.
In our commitment to keep alive the spirit of encounter between experiences and generationsfor 10 years we have kept awake in this center an intergenerational program, approved in the curricular project of the Santa Quiteria School and of which during the course, All the children of the school and the elders of Los Llanos participate.
We try to avoid building a wall of isolation between society and the elderly who live in a nursing home.
Our elders have taught us, indeed, they demand it of us, that when we reach this age and in this situation -admission to a residence- that we have to work for maintain the ties that unite them with our societywith our enclave, with our community, with the life.
And from this reflection, from the reality of the risk of social isolation of these elderly, our Intergenerational Programas an instrument so that, year after year, we favor, through a INTENTIONAL and continuous exchange, learning between the older and younger generations and EMPOWERING THE ELDERLY in his role as teacher transmitter.
Our intention is to get individual and social benefits by improving the integration of age groups and the cohesion of a society that is common to all groups and that, in the fraction that affects us, has the risk of dismembering due to isolation.
Once a month, and throughout the school year, the children from the different classes of the school come to carry out the programmed activity in the center. All except those of third; they know, from experience, that it is their turn to come camping at the end of the course.
We have done intergenerational gymkhanaswe have done cognitive stimulation contestswe have become participants, this year, of the emblematic contest “1,2,3, answer again”. Active seniors turned one day into actors, another into teachers, another into poets, singers, athletes, journalists…
The joint preparation of projectsthe development of tests to reach the final, the day of the concert, the day of the sports competition, the day of the musical gala… Final activities that always hide shared work days between both groups where the elder, our elders, are empowered in their role as transmitters of experience and knowledge and they wake up like that, with the sound of an alarm clock, like all of us do, with a task to do. An illusion.