Palos Verdes Peninsula Village Helps Connect Seniors on the Hill By Writer and Contributor Emily McGinn
In 2014, Sherry May and a group of older adults on the Peninsula met with an idea: to create a program that would forge connections and provide community for people in the area as they age. By 2016, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Village concept was born.
Since then, the Village has grown into a thriving nonprofit that provides volunteer opportunities, intergenerational connections, activities and more for the community.
“It’s a really special program started by a group of older adults who just wanted to chart a new way to support older adults on the Peninsula and in aging,” says executive director Laura Diepenbrock. “There are so many inspiring stories about what the Village has done, or what people have done through being part of this community. A big part of what we do is about building relationships between older adults, or older adults and younger volunteers.”
The Peninsula Village currently has 115 members and more than 3,000 volunteers of all ages, from recent retirees looking for new opportunities to high school students looking to give back to the community.
The Peninsula Village is part of a larger concept that swept across the country. The Village Movement is a grassroots effort designed to support people through aging. In the U.S., there are more than 300 villages.
Village programs include a variety of offerings that build relationships, from hiking groups and book clubs to lectures and movie nights. Village members can also request helping hands from volunteers — something as simple as stopping by to help with a technological issue or driving them to the store, for example.
Judy Bayer, communications chair and longtime Village member, has been part of the movement on the Hill since the beginning. At the time, she was recently retired and was drawn to the Village Movement idea.
“When you retire, and you've had a career that's been pretty intense, and all of a sudden you're totally retired, you think about, ‘How am I going to make my life feel fulfilled, and what am I going to do?’” Bayer says. “[Getting involved] gave me something to feel really good about and to feel like I was using my faculties. I wasn't just vegetating in front of the TV.”
For Bayer and others, the Village has become a tight-knit community that they can rely on.
“We show up for each other,” Diepenbrock says. “We offer assistance if the person needs assistance, and the assistance might just be a meal or someone to talk to. We can have a volunteer go over and visit with someone — really, whatever the person needs.”
The Peninsula Village focuses on helping older adults who want to stay in their homes and ensuring that older adults feel that they can “take charge of how they age,” Diepenbrock says. This gives the Village a unique angle compared to some other programs: it is driven by the members it serves rather than other people.
“It's giving people a voice in how they want to age,” Diepenbrock says. “I don't think, in a lot of cases, people really had that opportunity before the Village started. This organization is really about creating new possibilities and empowering people to create the life that they want to live in this stage of life. We're so open. We're such a dynamic program.”
Bio:
Emily McGinn is a journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She enjoys reporting on and writing about a variety of topics from lifestyle to news, especially in her areas of specialty, environmental science and political science.
