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Speakers Panel
(Cultural Competency
Training):
If you are part of any agency or organization that
offers social, health, or other services to seniors,
and you think your
organization could benefit from learning more about the special needs of the LGBT senior population,
please contact us. Our Speakers Panel includes both
men and women from Lavender Seniors. We tell our personal
stories, our
actual experiences, so others can come to better understand, respect, and
respond to our needs. We also
offer practical suggestions on how to make
your services more accessible to those of us who may need them.
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LGBT
Senior Awareness: Lavender Seniors encourages the
mainstream community to become more knowledgeable and more sensitive to the
needs of the many LGBT seniors who reside in the East Bay which we estimate
at between 20,000 and 30,000. We do this both through our Speaker’s Panel
and also through our involvement in the many groups that plan, fund and
provide services to seniors. Included in those groups are the City of
Oakland Aging Commission, the Alameda County Area Agency on Aging Advisory
Commission on Aging, the Contra Costa County Area Agency on Aging, the
Tri-City Elder’s Coalition and the Senior Services Coalition of Alameda
County. We firmly believe in collaborating with these groups to help them to
provide more LGBT friendly services to the LGBT senior community.A study
published in April 2003 in The Gerontologist found that, due to
life-long experiences of marginalization and oppression, “the possibility of
one day having to be reliant on the health care system, on a nursing home
facility, or any other social institution understandably provokes anxiety
and fear in aging lesbians and gay men. Consequently, many may avoid
accessing services altogether, even when their health, safety, and security
depend on it.
While isolation provided some protection in earlier times, it becomes a
serious threat when an LGBT senior grows frail, vulnerable, and in need of
health and related services. The survival skill of remaining hidden, though
necessary in the past, is now placing the health and well being of many in
the older LGBT population at high risk. LGBT seniors face many challenges as
they age as heterosexual people do. What makes it different for LGBT seniors
and makes their lives more difficult is the stigma and discrimination
attached to non-heterosexual identity.
It is critical that providers and the population at large become aware of
the three major difficulties for LGBT seniors:
- Economic Insecurity due to federal laws based on laws for the
heterosexual population
and not inclusive LGBT people.
- Unequal health care due to LGBT isolated lifestyles (due to
their reaction to historical discrimination), lack of LGBT-friendly providers, and the resulting
untreated
medical needs.
- Virtual non-existence of LGBT-friendly elder housing.
Lavender Seniors will continue to work to improve mainstream
sensitivities to the LGBT aging community.
Monthly
Informative Social Gatherings –
Lavender
Seniors holds three monthly lunches each month to help LGBT seniors create
informal social networks and gain important information about aging as LGBT
seniors; program topics are listed on the schedule in the current edition of
Lavender Notes.
Lunch Bunch: The City of Oakland co-hosts Lunch Bunch at the
North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland on the third
Friday of each
month from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Catered Lunch is funded by the City of
Oakland. The Center is located off 58th Street; Entrance and Free Parking
Lot in Rear. Monthly Programs to be announced in our newsletter and on
page of this Website. Drop-ins are welcome!
Potluck: Lavender Seniors Potluck is held at the site of our offices
at 1395 Bancroft Ave., San Leandro, on the second Saturday of the month from
12 to 2 p.m. Look for appropriate food to bring on the last page of the
current edition of our newsletter, Lavender Notes and
here on this Website.
TalkAbout:
The
South County Lunch and TalkAbout is co-hosted by the City of Fremont Human
Services Dept. and held on the fourth Friday of each month from 12 to 2 p.m.
It is located at the Fremont Senior Center 40086 Paseo Padre Pkwy,
Fremont. Hot Lunch,
cooked onsite, is now funded by the
City of Fremont.
Drop-ins are
Welcome!
1) The Lavender Scrolls Project, funded by the California Stories
Fund of the California Council for the Humanities, will collect the images
and stories from eight LGBT elders in our community and present them
visually and orally to all Californians as a way to give voice to this
often silenced population. The project will also create a community
dialogue about the importance of the lives of these LGBT people at our
culminating Community Discussion in June 2007. Contact
Leslie Bonett for more
information: 510.667.9655; or email
outreach@lavenderseniors.org
2)
LGBT Elder-Friendly
Project, identifying LGBT and mainstream agencies that demonstrate
that they welcome and understand the needs of LGBT elders. For
information, click details below our emblem, at right.
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Safe Visible
Celebrated details |
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For any of these services, please contact us at
(510) 667-9655,
email us
at
director@lavenderseniors.org or see
the
staff list for how to reach them.
If you are interested in volunteering your time, or if you know of any
LGBT senior who might be in need of our services, please
look here for further information.
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