Macon Magazine

located on Town Square Park, my vision was to turn it into an active aging facility. I went in with the mentality that this is not a nursing home. We are not here to sit, to look at the TV, to look at one another, and go home. With every single day we are offering activities and programs, we're going on trips, we have events every year. We are offering Zumba classes, chair exercise classes, line dance classes, pickleball classes, and things for being extremely active. What are some of the parts of being a supervisor that you enjoy the most? When they come in in the morning, to be able to speak and put a smile on their face, and they come in happy, and they come in eager every day to smile and to laugh and to leave that day with a smile on their face, and they say, "I'll see you tomorrow." That is what brings me joy as being a supervisor for our Macon-Bibb Parks and Recreation Department. What are the benefits that having recreational centers such as Elaine H. Lucas Senior Center create for a community, in your opinion? We offer so many resources for our senior community when they attend, and they take part in the programs and activities that we offer. A lot of times we have doctors, we've had attorneys. We've offered several different programs such as nutrition programs, where if you go to your doctor's office, you may have to pay a copay, where here you can take an eight-week course and it's free. Being an aging individual, we also offer a program where if they are at a stage in their life where they have hearing loss, and they need resources as far as a telephone that can assist them better with being able to hear and or hearing aids, we have organizations that write grants, and they offer those services for free to our members. How were you able to support your ELSC community during the COVID-19 pandemic? My vision throughout that process was, no matter if we were shut down and/or if our hours were adjusted, we still offered programming online. We have a very active chair exercise program that we offer every Wednesday. We still wanted to stay engaged with our members. So at the beginning of COVID, we basically had seniors to do a drive- thru, and we made sure that we downloaded our social media platforms on their phones, or they called us and we were able to give them that information or showed them how to stay connected with us. Throughout the pandemic, within the first two years, we stayed engaged with them either own through social media as well as offered bingo because that's another big event and activity that we offer every Friday. We would have parking lot bingo, and that became very, very big and well known here in Bibb County What project are you the proudest of implementing? I would have to say the Mental Mondays, especially in the pandemic timeframe. Mental wellness definitely became very potent. Everybody's talking about how mental wellness took to the plague on our community with seniors being stuck at home not having the interaction, not having the ability to come and go as they were pre-pandemic. Another big event that we have is Grandparents And Me. When the children are out of school, most times recreation thinks about servicing the kids, and a lot of times the grandparents are the ones that are having to keep those kids because their parents are still having to work. We work on intergenerational activities and intergenerational programming, so that was a really big program that we implemented the last two years. What I started noticing is that a lot of our grandparents would miss the Senior Center because they would have to keep their grandkids when they were out of school, so then we implemented Grandparents And Me Movie Night. We do realize that a lot of times grandparents possibly cannot afford to take their grandchildren all at once to the movie theater. We do a big event once a year where the grandparents have the opportunity to bring their grandkids with them to the Center, and we watch a movie, we play various activities, and we play different games, and the grandparents and the grandkids get an opportunity to eat dinner, and then they go home. As well, during the breaks that the kids have, when they're out of school — it may be fall break, spring break, winter break, summer break — anytime that they're out of school for those weeks, we always have a Grandparents And Me day or week, and we offer various activities and programs for both the grandparents and the kids. Are there any upcoming projects at the senior center, or projects you want to happen? Projects-wise, we are excited to hopefully have physical exercise equipment, which will be implemented into one of our rooms within the upcoming months. A lot of times, our seniors, we have to refer them to other recreational facilities that have exercise equipment. Hopefully soon we will have a pavilion that will be put in our back lawn area. We are excited to be able to utilize that space a little more coherently to where we're able to even be outside if it's too hot or if it's it maybe drizzling. What would you like more people to know about Macon- Bibb Parks and Rec? We would like for more people to be aware of the services that we offer. This is not a daycare. This is not an assisted living facility. This is an active aging facility for seniors that are 50 and above if they want their parent or their grandparents or themselves to stay active as much as possible, either if it's coming with friends to watch a movie and socialize, or if it's running a 5k and playing pickleball. We offer everything in between, if it's finding resources as far as housing, assistance with living arrangements, or resources as far as health care. 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