SAGE Blog

Council Leaders Identify and Implement LGBT Specific Health Strategies

Credit: Healthy Chicago LGBT Community Action Plan

The following is a guest post by Serena Worthington, SAGE's Director of Community Advocacy and Capacity Building.

Tomorrow begins a new adventure in community service for me. I’ll be attending the first meeting of the newly-formed Chicago LGBT Health Advisory Council which was created to “provide insight and input to the Department of Public Health on implementation of the LGBT Health Action Plan.” The LGBT Health Action Plan is an outline of 22 strategies designed to “improve the overall health of Chicago’s LGBT community.”

Our mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had this nice thing to say about the council.

"Chicago's strength is in the diversity of its communities, and I am committed to ensuring that all Chicagoans have access to the care and information they need to live healthy lives and contribute fully to the vibrancy of our city,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “This advisory council will lend important insight and knowledge to our efforts.”

I am joined by 15 talented and accomplished folks, some of whom I know already and some that I am excited to meet for the first time tomorrow. 

National Volunteer Week: Volunteerism Is at the Heart of SAGE

Did you know? April 21-27, 2013 is National Volunteer Week!

Lucio (in yellow) and Jeannette (to Lucio's right) have been matched for 1.5 years and are very attached to each other.

According to the week’s official sponsor, National Volunteer Week is about inspiring, recognizing and encouraging people to seek out imaginative ways to engage in their communities. It’s about demonstrating to the nation that by working together, we have the fortitude to meet our challenges and accomplish our goals.

At SAGE, our volunteers embody the spirit of service. They are an important part of our family, spending their available time with us to lead programming at The SAGE Center, offer mature job-seekers tips on finding work through SAGEWorks or work with LGBT elders in their own communities across the nation through SAGENet. Without these valuable members of our community, we could not do all that we do.

In fact, one of our oldest and most recognizable volunteer programs, the Friendly Visiting program, is led by an outstanding SAGE volunteer, Matilde Busana. The SAGE Friendly Visitor program, founded in 1979 and the first of its kind in the U.S., matches volunteers from the community with LGBT older adults ("friends at home") to form relationships that are mutually rewarding and build community.

National Healthcare Decisions Day

Today marks the 6th annual National HealthCare Decisions Day.  The purpose of this day is to inspire, educate & empower the public & providers about the importance of advance care planning.

To educate the LGBT community about advance care planning, SAGE’s National Resource Center on LGBT Aging worked with Tom Sciacca, a Trusts and Estates attorney, and SAGE Legal Clinic volunteer, to create informational videos about the importance of wills, advance directives and the legal impact of marriage.  Watch the videos below and stay tuned for SAGE events later in the month around advance directives.

 

Honoring MLK Day of Service: How One SAGE Volunteer Gives Back

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'"

- Martin Luther King Jr.

SAGE Harlem Program Assistant, Patricia Fraser and Volunteer Shelly Montrose
(Click Photo to Enlarge)

January 21, 2013 will mark the official Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day of Service, empowering individuals and communities to come together and volunteer their time to get involved and give back. Americans are encouraged to help out where they can, whether it’s serving food at a soup kitchen or organizing a clothing drive for those in need. Together, we can begin to create solutions to social problems, moving us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community.

At SAGE, our volunteers embody the spirit of service. They are an important part of our family, spending their available time with us to lead programming at The SAGE Center, visit a homebound LGBT older adult through Friendly Visitors or work with LGBT elders in their own communities through SAGENet. Without these valuable members of our community, we could not do all that we do.

This year, SAGE is celebrating MLK Day of Service a bit early with the White House. In honor of this day, we are highlighting the story of Shelly Montrose, an African American female volunteer at our SAGE Harlem program. A neighborhood program based on affinity, SAGE Harlem is dedicated to creating a safe haven for LGBT older people in Harlem, East Harlem and the Bronx and connecting them to services in their community. Shelly, an older lesbian herself, is a longtime Harlem resident and has been volunteering with SAGE for almost a year. Shelly told us how she became a volunteer: