The Fuller Center has been named a $100,000 beneficiary of the Brain Bowl Volunteer Committee Project, in conjunction with the Volen Center. The announcement was made by Pam Higer-Polani on February 8 at the 9th Annual Brain Bowl Luncheon at Boca West Country Club.
The funds will finance an intergenerational program, supported by Fuller Center and the Volen Center, and will establish a community room where seniors and children will interact, play, thrive and enhance each other’s lives. The project will benefit the community by expanding the opportunity for 28 more children, ages 3-5 years, to access needed child-care at a time when affordable care is difficult to find.
Brain Bowl Events, Inc. is a volunteer-based non-profit organization whose mission is to
help raise awareness, promote understanding and provide support to those living in our community and their loved ones coping with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, the 100 types of Dementia or a related neurocognitive disorder.
“This new program will help working families, particularly employees of the Volen Center, by offering child care at their workplace so they are free to care for the elderly who are counting on them,” said Ellyn Okrent, CEO of Fuller Center. “Equally important, this program will give the elderly suffering from loneliness and isolation a purpose and a reason to live. Research has shown that having a purpose improves health and has a direct correlation with the extension of life.”
Ms. Okrent went on to say that intergenerational facilities save users and communities space and money while improving the health and overall outcomes of both age groups. While these programs are widely supported, they aren’t well known and receive little funding. In fact, there are waitlists at intergenerational schools because of the benefits.
Numerous studies have linked social interaction with decreased loneliness, delayed mental decline, lower blood pressure, and reduced risk of disease and death.
Seniors are given a chance to pass down knowledge and stories and children are more likely to be patient with seniors. In addition, children who have early contact with older people are less likely to view them as incompetent. The children are prone to feel more comfortable around those with disabilities and impairments of all kinds than their peers who lack such experiences. Children often live far from their biological grandparents; this gives them an easier way to have daily interactions with this age group.
For more information, please contact Assistant Director of Philanthropy Alana Lagerström at alagerstrom@fullercenterfl.org or call (561) 391-7274, ext. 134.
About the Fuller Center
For more than 50 years, the Fuller Center’s mission has been to embrace, educate, and empower hardworking, under-resourced families and children to reach their full potential. We build a positive future through education for the more than 900 children (infants through teens) that we serve annually, as well as 600 family members. The Fuller Center reaches families in 20 zip codes throughout Palm Beach County, as well as North Broward County.
Almost all Fuller Center working parents – 92% – serve as essential or frontline workers, working in hospitals, retail outlets, restaurants, and hotels. They are our bus drivers, store clerks and cashiers, farmworkers, delivery drivers, security guards, bank tellers, office workers, healthcare workers, home health aides, hospital orderlies and cafeteria workers, and childcare and eldercare workers.
Our programs help empower children to start school prepared, succeed academically, and break the generational cycle of poverty through quality early childhood education, after-school and summer camp programs, our new private elementary school and teen leadership programs, and comprehensive, family-centered support services. They also empower parents who are essential to keeping our local economy open and who provide the vital services we all count on.
The Fuller Center also offers mentoring programs and adult on-the-job training, coaching, and employment support, and no-cost transportation from 12 area schools to our campus-based after-school programs. We serve more than 1,800 nutritious meals and snacks daily.
In addition, Fuller Center provides opportunities for local colleges and universities to place undergraduate and graduate students in internships and child development practicums.
