Many world travelers residing in senior living communities may not be able to take as many trips as they used to, but that does not mean they are unable to see the world. At Morning Pointe Senior Living, a campaign aims to bring the rest of the world to residents in communities across the nation. It all started with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“It was a situation where residents were being quarantined to their room, and we wanted something that would be engaging and fun,” said Amanda Yelenick, Morning Pointe’s vice president of life enrichment. “So we started off with what you would think are typical places to go — Ireland for the month of March for St. Paddy’s Day and that type of thing. We do a virtual travel theme and then also a monthly theme, so last year we tried US cities just to change it up.”
To celebrate the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Morning Pointe communities nationwide scheduled “visits” to various historic Olympic host cities each month, including Athens, Greece (host of the 2004 games), Rio de Janeiro (2016) and Tokyo (2020). Each “visit” includes a variety of related activities, guest speakers, specialty foods and, most importantly, travel stories from residents.
“We have a lot of residents who are world travelers; they went all over, to many different countries. They have their own videos that they can share, and it sparked conversations,” said Andrea Saddler, life enrichment director for Morning Pointe of Lexington, KY. “A gentleman went to Brazil, and he talked about staying on the Amazon River in one of those huts over the river with his wife. His wife has passed away now, but he got to remember and honor her memory. It was just a really nice thing to watch him up there talking and reliving some of those times that he had with her.”
Aside from the planned activities, the celebration also highlighted resident creativity. At Saddler’s community, one resident built an entire interactive exhibit in the shape of a plane to simulate the travel experience. Of course, no flight experience is complete without a flight attendant.
“One of our residents was an engineer at the University of Kentucky, and I just decided that we would build an immersion room that they use for dementia patients,” Saddler said. “We had a little space, and we built our own airport, and there was a giant airplane where residents could go inside. We had the big screen on the end of the runway or on the end of the airplane, where we flashed a video from an airplane taking off. One of our residents is retired from Delta, so he enjoyed doing his spiel, because it took him back to the days when he used to travel.”
Despite the 2024 Olympics ending, Morning Pointe communities will continue the celebration through the end of the year. Yelenick particularly enjoyed visits to France and Australia but said that seeing the residents reminisce and reflect always is the most poignant part of the festivities for her.
“We talk a lot, at least in my experience, in this industry about how people retire and so much of their purpose was tied up in their work that they did,” Yelenick said. “Now they retire and they kind of lose that sense of purpose. So if we can find whatever it is that adds purpose, if it’s building an airplane or making a snack for another resident, I feel like we’re winning when we do that.”
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