During holidays, the Community Center offers two afternoon shifts between generations
Exclamation echoes in the social center hall. About twenty people sat at several tables trying different board games. Joe and Martin sit at a table and hold the box on top. “How do we play this game?”Joe asks out loud. At the next table, Nasthasya, 12, turns around and learns about the game in question. I play it in college.
The teenager stands and explains to the retirees how to play Crazy Cups. “We’ve played three or four different games, and that makes you discover something else.”Joe testifies. The two retirees came to participate in the afternoon board games, which is also an opportunity for intergenerational meeting. At a nearby table, 7-and-a-half-year-old Jane discovers the rules of a pirate chest. “We came to enjoy some time together while sharing with others”Mother Fanny explains.
fight solitude
The workshop was successful. Oldest people, parents and kids can play the game, the youngest of which is three years old running from table to table to try all the toys at his fingertips. Since the beginning of February, the Social Center has held a weekly meeting every Tuesday.
In addition to tea or coffee, which are already installed every week, residents are offered various workshops: games, reading or plastic arts. Martin and Joe are organized into Quai. “We come to tea or coffee, to the cooking workshops, we were in the mandala workshop. It’s good, it’s good that there is something every Tuesday”Joe continues. “It’s been a while, especially with bad weather and long winters. We have a safe place to see people”Martin adds.
“Sometimes it’s hard to come the first time, so we offer different things and once people are there, we give them the other workshops, and we build a bond of trust”Julian Barthelemy, Director of Quai explains. As part of the project contract renewal with CAF signed last December, the social center has studied the needs of the territory and noted that many elderly people suffer from isolation.
“In Saint-Affrique, the population is aging. In addition to the national trend, there are many facilities for retirement, people who are sometimes single and have no family, we must look for an audience”says Julian Barthelemy.
This observation led Quai to create the weekly meeting every Tuesday, which should once again become a landmark for the residents. Sabine Brunel, librarian at the Media Library, is leading the new Tuesday meetings. “In the media library, I already had a multi-generational approach to books. By coming to the community center, I met other people and continued my work with the elderly and the disabled”she explained.
“The idea is also to mix this audience with the youth. As a social hub, we try to create new connections”Julian Barthelemy adds.
Board games specialist
Fabian Stre is a game librarian at the Saint African Media Library. He is involved in organizing these two intergenerational meetings around board games. “Today there are about forty different games. I choose family games, modern and affordable, but also games where the games are short enough to work”.
Here, there is no place or scribble, participants compete in dice games, memory games, agility games or even construction games.
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