{"id":3831,"date":"2015-06-18T17:43:19","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T21:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2015\/06\/18\/advocates-for-greenvilles-seniors\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T17:23:52","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T22:23:52","slug":"advocates-for-greenvilles-seniors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/advocates-for-greenvilles-seniors\/","title":{"rendered":"A voice for Greenville’s seniors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OlliGraduation_053\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Furman University\u2019s Senior Leaders Greenville is designed for people who aren\u2019t ready to retire from life and who want to learn more about the issues and challenges facing their age group.<\/p>\n

\"Senior-Leaders-Greenville-Logo-Color\"<\/a>The program \u201chelps them to be a voice for their peers,\u201d said Nancy Kennedy, director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Furman. Program participants hope that their combined\u00a0wisdom and experience will generate\u00a0a powerful voice of advocacy for seniors, resulting in better choices for aging well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely worth your time if you\u2019re willing to put the time in,\u201d said Susan Peck, a Greenville resident for 35 years who was in the first Senior Leaders Greenville class. \u201cI think it\u2019s unique\u201d with nothing else in the area that gives a person such broad knowledge of the issues facing senior citizens.<\/p>\n

The program, designed and facilitated by OLLI, focuses on topics including healthcare, transportation, housing, government, technology, government, education, and leadership. Community partners supporting Senior Leadership Greenville are St. Francis Lifewise and Senior Action of Greenville.<\/p>\n

Participants meet community leaders, activists, government leaders, and experts to dive deeply into these interests as well as learn about Greenville\u2019s history and people.<\/p>\n

The inaugural class last year had 29 participants with 27 graduating from the program. Six of the graduates were elected to the current Silver Haired Legislature, which meets and develops legislature that is presented to the General Assembly, she said.<\/p>\n

Dan Garvin, one of the first-year participants and a delegate to the Silver Haired Legislature, said he saw an announcement about Senior Leaders Greenville in the newspaper and \u201cit looked like a way to know what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group provided him with more information on senior issues, associations and events as well as helping him meet\u00a0new people.<\/p>\n

Peck, an OLLI member whose daughter has been involved in Leadership Greenville and the Liberty Fellowship, sai\u00a0\u201cThis idea was not foreign to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an incredible year,\u201d Peck said. \u201cSome subjects were of more interest to me than others. It made me think more clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she sees \u201cthe biggest issue facing seniors as loneliness and being alone and coping with everyday life. That is worse because of lack of access to grocery stores and transportation. Access to transportation in Greenville is horrendous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garvin, who is originally from New York, also sees the major issue facing senior citizens in the state to be transportation. \u201cThe biggest problem is there is not any in the rural areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

This could be an issue discussed in the Silver Haired Legislature because \u201cmost folks don\u2019t know what is needed.\u201d Getting seniors from all across the state together \u2013 either in Columbia or online or on the telephone is important so they will learn about issues facing all parts of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the Low Country have different problems than those in the Upstate, Garvin said.<\/p>\n

Applications to attend Senior Leaders Greenville are currently being accepted, with a deadline of July 1.<\/p>\n

Members meet monthly on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Furman or other locations around the county, focusing on a specific topic each month, Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

The program, which began after research into similar programs, is based on the Leadership Greenville program at the Greenville Chamber, she said. After seeing and hearing the results of Leadership Greenville, \u201cwe thought why seniors couldn\u2019t do something like this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at it with a senior slant,\u201d she said. For example, if education is a topic, Greenville Leadership would look at K-12 and higher education while Senior Leaders Greenville would study re-education for adults.<\/p>\n

The program begins with an orientation in August and concludes with a graduation luncheon in May. The goals of the program are diverse, Kennedy said. Some participants may become more involved in volunteerism while others may become active in civic organizations.<\/p>\n

Some \u201cmay just become better informed,\u201d allowing them to become better citizens, she said.<\/p>\n

Kennedy said the organizers were pleased with the initial year. \u201cIt\u2019s so rewarding to plan something and see it happen the way it was supposed to,\u201d she said. Graduates are helping plan the second year of Senior Leadership Greenville and are creating an SLG Alumni organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the participants get more involved in things,\u201d she said. Even at the orientation meeting, \u201cthey immediately started networking with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

To qualify, a participant must be at least 55 years old and be interested in learning about issues affecting senior citizens and how to create changes surrounding those issues, she said. The cost is $350 and scholarships are available. Applications can be made online at www.furman.edu\/olli<\/a> or by calling 864-294-2998 and up to 40 participants will be selected.<\/p>\n

Although facilitated by OLLI, participants are not required to be OLLI members. Themajority of the first year participants were not OLLI members when they joined, but Kennedy hopes many will become involved in the lifelong learning organization.<\/p>\n

Senior Leaders Greenville is a result of OLLI\u2019s goal of \u201clooking at ways to enhance our program,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s OLLI program offers 100 classes \u201cfrom Latin to genetic to hiking to history\u201d for retired people around the Upstate, she said. Membership in the lifelong learning program is $50 annually and classes taught by volunteers are $50 each. Packages of classes are available at a reduced price. Last year the organization, which began in 1993 as Furman University Learning in Retirement and transitioned to OLLI in 2008, had 1,770 members. OLLI also offers its members bonus activities throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Garvin said that participants in Senior Leaders Greenville, including those who had lived in South Carolina for years, did not know anything about the Silver Haired Legislature until it was mentioned at one of the sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just found out about it,\u201d he said, and \u201cwe thought it would be interesting to find out what it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peck, who said she\u2019s not particularly political, said that if the Senior Leaders Greenville participants who were elected to the Silver Haired Legislature have their way, \u201cchanges are coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that could be important. She said she doesn\u2019t believe the General Assembly and other government officials think much about the needs of senior citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not one of the fuzzy subjects,\u201d she said. \u201cThat the children.\u201d<\/p>\n

The S.C. Silver Haired Legislature was created in 1999 by the General Assembly and held its first organization session that year. The body has 152 Representatives, all of whom are registered voters over the age of 60. Representatives are elected by counties on a ratio of one each per 5,000 South Carolinians over age 60. The group meets every September in legislative session to formulate resolutions to present to the General Assembly the following January.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Furman University\u2019s Senior Leaders Greenville is designed for people who aren\u2019t ready to retire from life and who want to learn more about the issues and challenges facing their age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":14980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-continuing-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}