Tag Archives for Leadership Rhode Island

Senior Fellows Give Time to Non-Profits 

Published in RINewsToday on January 20, 2025

 By Herb Weiss

When a state law was enacted in 2024 allowing families to install monitoring cameras in the nursing home rooms of their loved ones,  Ginny Lee, one of Leadership Rhode Island’s first Senior Fellows, was among those celebrating.

Lee had spent a lot of time button-holing legislators and testifying before House and Senate committees in support of the bill, which is intended to protect nursing home and assisted living residents from physical, verbal and sexual abuse.  

By advocating for passage of the “Grammy cam” surveillance law, Lee was fulfilling the civic commitment she made in 2023 as a member of the inaugural Senior Fellows program, a joint effort of LRI and Age-Friendly RI. 

Empowering older adults to take “an active role in shaping the state’s future” is exactly what James Connell,  Age-Friendly’s executive director, had in mind when he approached LRI’s then-new Executive Director, Michelle Carr,to create the Senior Fellows program.

Though Lee was among the Senior Fellows who successfully fulfilled their commitments to improve the lives of older Rhode Islanders, some Fellows in the first cohort struggled to find a way to make good on their respective pledges.    

Feedback from the pilot program indicated that more structure would help participants carry out their civic commitments, says Lyanh Ramirez, LRI’s development manager.

That’s why the 2024 Senior Fellows program offered participants the option of  volunteering with a community organizationalready engaged in age-friendly issues and activities.          

The goal was to connect participants “to the causes and efforts they were passionate about,” Ramirez says. “There are so many wonderful initiatives already happening that we didn’t want to duplicate efforts.”                 

Participants, ranging in age from 62 to 86, attended eight sessions in May and June during which they discussed the needs and challenges of the state’s older population and many other topics.

 Of the 28 participants, five are LRI alumni:  Ray Pouliot, Barry Couto, Jodi Glass, Patricia Raskin, and Patty Cotoia.        

Intergenerational communication was the focus of one session in which LRI alumni from different generations joined a discussion on ageism.  Other sessions dealt with the value of knowing one’s strengths, and legislative activity related to healthy aging.

Participants also heard directly from each of the nine partner organizations that had agreed to work with one or more of the newly minted Senior Fellows until the end of the year.

Partner organizations included the Rhode Island affiliates of Age Friendly, the AARP,  Meals on Wheels, PACE, the Senior Agenda Coalition,  the Village Common and the United Way, along with the state Department of Health and the Coventry Human Services/Resource & Senior Center.

  Here’s a sampling of what some of the Senior Fellows accomplished:  

Five Senior Fellows are contributing in different ways to the state Health Department’s efforts to make quality-of -life-improvements for those with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders (ADRD).

 “They’ve all been very active,” says Victoria O’Connor, chair of the statewide ADRD Advisory Council that developed a five-year plan of  strategies and activities to support those with dementia and their caretakers.

 Joe McCarthy came up with the idea of finding out what other states are doing to address ADRD issues and to compare their plans with Rhode Island’s current five-year plan.  

Two others, Brian Grossguth and Roland Moussally, did some “boots-on-the-ground” research. Grossguth visited two senior centers to get a sense for what resources are needed to better serve those with dementia; Moussally met with members of a group in Pawtucket to learn how they are incorporating the needs of residents with dementia in Pawtucket’s Age-Friendly action plan.

 Meanwhile, Kathy Trier and Gary Avigne have contributed research to guide a new mini-grant program to support community initiatives for those with dementia.

 They researched other grant applications for similar amounts of funding – less than $5,000 – to inform the development of the ADRD application. Trier and Avigne also assisted in the creation of a scoring matrix to compare the responses of applicants.  

The five Senior Fellows presented their findings at the November meeting of the ADRD Advisory Council, the group that oversees progress in implementing the strategies in the 2024-2029 State plan.                  

Five other Senior Fellows volunteered at the AARP.  Four  focused on efforts to make communities age-friendly.              

 “It’s important for everyone to have a safe place to walk, ride a bike, or even push a baby carriage,” explains Ray Pouliot, 77, retired East Greenwich school teacher.       

The first hurdle for joining the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities is getting a commitment from local officials. 

 At the start of his work with AARP,  Pouliot noted that being a resident of East Providence “and personally knowing the mayor might help get this initiative up and running.”

He was right. In October,  Pouliot, Deborah Perry, also from East Providence, and a small AARP delegation, met with Mayor Roberto L. DaSilva to explain what it takes to become an Age-Friendly city.

 The mayor agreed on-the-spot to support the effort. Pouliot and Perry get “full credit” for the success, says Matt Netto, AARP’s associate state director for outreach and advocacy.

 Mary Ann Shallcross Smith, a state representative and President of Dr. Day Care Learning Centers, chose to concentrate on sidewalk improvement efforts because “all the phone calls I get from many people in my hometown of Lincoln” are about sidewalks.

Shallcross Smith says working on the AARP initiative complements her legislative interests to ensure sidewalk safety. She introduced a bill in the 2024 legislative session  to maintain sidewalks and curbs along the state’s highways. The bill didn’t make it, but she intends to re-introduce a revised version in 2025.

“If there are no holes or cracks in sidewalks it will enable people who want to take a walk,” says Shallcross Smith.  “It’s free exercise!”

She and Netto of the AARP also plan to approach Town Administrator Philip G. Gould soon to urge that Lincoln consider joining the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities.

Senior Fellow Perry, 62, president and CEO of the YWCA, says she opted for the Livable Communities program “because it resonates with me.”  She once worked as a municipal planner.Perry, who expects to retire in August, 2025, says she will conduct  a sidewalk audit in a Providence neighborhood to fulfill her Senior Fellow pledge. After retiring, she hopes to have time to get involved in East Providence’s Age-Friendly program.

In October, Senior Fellow Janis Solomon, who retired in 2008 after 43 years as a professor of German Studies at Connecticut College, joined a sizable group of Rhode Islanders learning how to conduct a sidewalk audit. She will audit streets in a neighborhood in Providence.      

A fifth Senior Fellow, Vince Burks, 64, former communications director at Amica Insurance Company, chose to volunteer for the AARP’s public speaker’s bureau. ”I have experience with public speaking and public affairs, so I felt this would be a good fit,” he says.

The Senior Fellows program is offered tuition-free. Carolyn Belisle, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, says she was thrilled to join Age Friendly as a sponsor of the innovative program.

Age beat writer gives us his most important columns in 2023

Published in Blackstone Valley Call and Times, on January 1, 2024

Over the years, like many of the nation’s news organizations, The Pawtucket Times, created an ‘Age Beat’ column in 2002 that allowed this writer for several years to cover a myriad of aging issues, including Social Security and Medicare, ethics, long-term care, consumer issues, spirituality, pop culture, health care and economics. Ultimately, I would return in July, 2012 to resume writing, also picking up other weekly commentaries.

As an ‘age beat’ journalist for over 44 years, I have penned more than 930 stories covering aging, health care and medical issues. These authored and coauthored pieces have appeared in national, state and trade publications.

In 2023, my articles appeared weekly in 52 issues of the Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call (now combined in one newspaper called the Blackstone Valley Call & Times), and RINewsToday.com, a statewide digital news publication.

As we celebrate the New Year and look forward to 2024, looking back, here are my top five favorite articles published in 2023:

“In the coming years, generations of older Veterans will be leaving us,” – RINewsToday, Nov. 13, 2023  

This commentary published before Veterans Day, had the Department of Veteran Affairs estimate that there will be a couple of hundred World War II veterans, over 1,600 Korean and 14,000 Vietnam veterans still alive in Rhode Island. In the coming years, frailty and health issues will keep these elderly veterans’ from attending Veteran Day celebrations and even at their reunions.     
 
As a generation of Civil War and World War I veterans vanish in 1956 and 2011, this writer urged readers to cherish the surviving older veterans. In the next thirty years, it was stressed that new generations of veterans who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam will pass away and these veterans were urged to share their personal stories and oral histories for the sake of America’s future generations. “They have so much to say, and America’s younger generations have much to learn from them,” noted the commentary. 

This commentary was dedicated to the writer’s father, Second Lt. Frank M. Weiss, who died in December 2003, in Dallas, Texas at 89 years old.

“Passages – Life and Times of Morris Nathanson,” RINewsToday, Oct. 7, 2023

Over two decades, this writer would visit Morris Nathanson on Saturday afternoons sitting in his living room drinking cups of freshly brewed coffee.  We would talk about Pawtucket, world events, and he would reminiscence about his amazing life’s journey from his childhood in Pawtucket, to the international world he lived in later in his life.

My friend, 95-year-old Morris Nathanson, a painter, illustrator and restaurant/hospitality designer died last September. My commentary was written to recognize and honor Morris’s incredible life, detailing his World War II experiences, fighting for civil rights, and his impact on the art and design scene.

Growing up poor during the depression in Pawtucket’s Pleasant View neighborhood, Morris, a spitting image of Mark Twine, or maybe Albert Einstein to me, would ultimately have a major impact on Rhode Island’s art and restaurant design scene. 

Morris brought the strategy of adaptive re-use of underutilized and vacant mills to city and state officials, a concept that he picked up from his years of working in New York City, watching the development and transformation of the industrial mills in SOHO.

Witnessing firsthand man’s biases and prejudices motivated him throughout seventy-five years of his long life to fight for the equal rights of all.  Morris participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaigns in Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  

At age 24, Morris, head of the design team at Paramount, developed and designed the first franchise in American history, Dunkin Donuts. While working with Friedman he also designed restaurants in the pavilions of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York.

When Morris left Paramount Restaurant Supply Co, his most notable design projects locally include Hemenway’s, Ruth Chris Steak House, 22 Bowen, restaurants and bars for the Inn at Castle Hill, Capital Grill, Pizzeria Uno, Joe’s American Bar & Grill, Mills Tavern, Waterman Grill, Red Stripe and for those who still remember, the beloved Ming Garden and McGarry’s Restaurant in downtown Providence.  He also had clients all over the world.

It would take pages to detail all of Morris’s professional accomplishments while serving on state, city and nonprofit organizations throughout his long-life.  Hopefully I whetted your appetite to learn more about his life by reading this commentary. 

“Will Magaziner fulfill call to reestablish House Aging Committee,” RINewsToday, Oct. 9, 2023.

As reported, with Congressman David Cicilline retiring from Congress, no House lawmaker has yet stepped up to reintroduce, H.R. 583, the Rhode Island lawmaker’s resolution to reestablish the House Select Committee on Aging (HSCoA). Without receiving a vote in the House Rules Committee at the end of the 117th Congress, the resolution was considered “dead.” On his way out Cicilline was not successful in passing the legislative baton and finding a new original sponsor.  The Rhode Island Congressman had introduced this resolution in four Congressional sessions.

The HSCoA was a permanent select committee of the U.S. House of representatives between 1974 to 1992.  The committee was initially created with the intent of not crafting legislative proposals, but of conducting investigations and holding hearings to put the Congressional spotlight on aging issues. Its purpose was to push for legislation and other actions, working with standing committees, through regular committee channels.

This writer asks who will ultimately pick up the legislative baton from Cicilline to become Rhode Island’s fiery aging advocate?  Will it be Congressman Seth Magaziner, or the newly elected Congressman Gabe Amo, from Rhode Island’s Congressional District 1 to step to the plate?

The article asks why shouldn’t a Rhode Island Congressman follow in the footsteps of former Rhode Island Congressman John E. Fogarty (dec.) and be the original sponsor of legislation that will have a major impact on national aging policy. The lawmaker would become a hero to America’s seniors.  

“Unique partnership creates Senior Fellows pilot program,” RINewsToday, Dec. 11, 2023

This commentary announced that the success of a pilot Senior Fellows Program, created by Leadership Rhode Island (LRI) and Age-Friendly Rhode Island (AFRI), the organizations are seeking funding to offer another session in the summer of 2024.

The unique initiative prepared 25 Senior Fellows to advocate for improvements that address age-related challenges in Rhode Island. The initial eight-week program was tuition-free. The first crop of Senior Fellows, residents of 13 different cities and towns in Rhode Island, ranged in age from 62 to 83. Nearly half were retired.

The idea to develop a senior advocates program came from Marianne Raimondo, a graduate of LRI’s Core Program, who made the connection between Leadership Rhode Island and James Burke Connell. Connell is the executive director of Age-Friendly Rhode Island, an initiative at Rhode Island College that represents a coalition of public and private agencies, organizations and individuals committed to healthy aging.

Connell proposed the pilot program because, he says, empowering seniors to become advocates, activists and champions of age-friendly thinking and practices “will result in a Rhode Island where older adults thrive and live their best lives.”  He was inspired by similar programs in Maine and New Hampshire.

Age-Friendly RI raised the funds for the pilot program, and relied on LRI’s “talented team” to handle recruiting, participant selection, curriculum planning, and guiding participants in the development of individual community commitments, Connell says.

Most session days were divided into two parts, with half focused on knowledge-building around relevant issues, such as housing, food insecurity, transportation needs, and health care. The other half focused on skill-building, such as writing persuasively, public speaking and network building, to enable the Fellows to develop and eventually execute their own Civic Commitments.

The Fellows took turns describing their Civic Commitments during their final session, held at the RI State House.  The presentations, which included several “poignant and pin-drop moments,” were well received.

“Increased funding must be tied to nursing home mandated minimum staffing“, RINewsToday, September 25, 2023

The commentary announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had issued a proposed rule to establish comprehensive staffing requirements for nursing homes—including, for the first time, national minimum nurse staffing standards. CMS officials said that the requirement would improve both safety and promote high-quality care in the nation’s 18,700 skilled nursing facilities delivering care to 1.2 million residents each day.

National and Rhode Island nursing home trade groups pushed back on the unfunded mandate requiring more staffing especially during a severe labor shortage forcing hundreds of facilities across the nation to close because of lack of workers.

​John E. Gage, President, and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Care Association, reported that six Rhode Island-based facilities have closed since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Three others are currently in receivership. He warns that arbitrary federal staffing mandates will result in more closures, and residents will be displaced from their homes just as they were most recently when Charlesgate Nursing Center in Providence.

James Nyberg, president, and CEO of LeadingAge Rhode Island, with offices in East Providence, sees a staffing ratio mandate as a blunt enforcement tool that does not consider the numerous challenges facing providers, including Medicaid underfunding, lack of workforce, and the diversity of resident needs. Moreover, he charged that fining for being unable to meet a staffing ratio is counterproductive by siphoning off scarce resources that facilities need as they seek to address their workforce and resident care needs.

To review ALL of Herb’s articles published by RINewstoday, go to https://rinewstoday.com/herb-weiss/

LRI Graduates Give Sage Advice to President Trump

Published in Woonsocket Call on September 3, 2017

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” — Thomas Jefferson

With the dust settling after the surprising victory of GOP Candidate Donald Trump last November, the news analysis on the election results clearly revealed that America is a divided nation of red states and blue states, either leaning Republican or Democrat. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and into President Trumps 226 days in office, personal attacks are a very common occurrence on Face Book if the person disagrees with your posting.

Jeffersonian Dinners: Finding a Common Purpose

We have lost our way in agreeing to disagree on political issues. We are no longer able to civilly discuss our differences on issues. How can a politically divided nation relearn how to have civil political dialogue to find a bridge between our differing political philosophies and positions on policies. Here’s Leadership Rhode Island’s answer.

Last January, LRI released its second book in three years. “Dear President Trump,” a compilation of 31 letters written by LRI alumni who attended 1 of 13 structured “Jeffersonian Dinners” held across the state in 2016. The attendees began each dinner conversation answering the question, “When faced with ideological or principle-based differences with another, how did you and the other party find common ground and/or progress?”

Each letter compiled in this 32-page book was written “to the office/position and not the person,” as submissions and selections were made prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 8, 2016. “Given the emotional nature of this year’s presidential election, which might be best described as identity politics at its most divisive, we thought advice from accomplished Rhode Island leaders from different sectors and industries to our incoming president would be gladly received by the next President and the citizens of Rhode Island,” said Mike Ritz, Executive Director of Leadership Rhode Island, in a statement.

“There’s much wisdom and perspective inside.” In all, about 30% of the 111 dinner attendees – corporate executives, small business owners, directors of state agencies, elected officials, executive directors of non-profits, retirees, and veterans – submitted a 300-word letter which began with “Dear President.” Inserted between letters are quotes by each of the 44 U.S. Presidents, which were curated by Dr. Jane Nugent, a 1995 graduate of Leadership Rhode Island and LRI’s volunteer project advisor.

Sage Words of Advice

Here are a few snippets of advice in letters from LRI graduates…

Tricia O’ Neil, LRI ‘09, Family Wealth Director and Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley, asks the incoming president to remember: “You are no longer a Democrat or Republican; you are now the leader of the greatest country in the world. Regardless of party, we are a rightfully proud country that continues to hold the truths of our Declaration of Independence, all the freedoms it stands for, as self-evident. Sometimes we will agree with your stances and sometimes we will not, but if you talk to us with honesty, patience and understanding, and stay consistent and steadfast, we will all successfully grow together.”

Jerauld Adams, LRI ’14, President of North American Industries, Inc., urges the new president to: “Find the strength to negotiate a middle ground on issues and policies so that your team will lead responsibly and will gain respect. Americans need you to be strong; they crave someone they can look up to. As the earth grows smaller, we need a more united America.”

Mayor Scott Avedisian, LRI ’97, of Warwick, gives his thoughts to the incoming president, too: “When dealing with the opposition, please find ways to agree and to disagree without vilifying them. Lead this nation by being an example of calm, allowing all to have their say and make decisions that exemplify the best in all people and all things.”

The “Jeffersonian Dinner” series, which provoked the idea for the book, will continue by Leadership Rhode Island in 2017. Leadership Rhode Island is currently in talks with other organizations outside of the state to collaborate on a national initiative for helping citizens talk through their differences productively and with civility, an action which Ritz says is desperately needed to heal a divided country after very contentious and negative election campaigns.

Adds, Matt Coupe, LRI’s Alumni & Community Engagement Liaison, the idea for Jeffersonian Dinners came out of a series of alumni focus groups held in early 2016 regarding membership benefits. “Alumni told us they wanted to connect with each other in more intimate settings than the large parties and networking events we often host, and they wanted to discuss topics of substance, says Coupe.

According to Coupe, Maryellen Butke, of Providence-based Namaste Consulting who graduated from LRI in 2008, introduced the concept of Jeffersonian Dinners, which had been developed by Jeffrey Walker at the Monticello Foundation, to LRI. Walker wrote a book, called The Generosity Network, in which he describes the Dinners as being modeled after dinner parties that Thomas Jefferson had once hosted at Monticello. Jefferson’s idea was to bring people of different backgrounds together to discuss topics of importance, so he could hear multiple perspectives on various issues he was facing.

LRI launched its Jeffersonian Dinner series in March 2016, after a few months of initial planning. Each dinner took about a month to plan, said Coupe, noting that the nonprofit organization did not even any expenses in planning these dinners, other than some minor advertising costs and staff time. “Thanks to the generosity of Paul O’Reilly, President and CEO of the Newport Restaurant Group (graduating LRI in 1995), we were able to host six dinners at his restaurants [22 Bowen’s Avvio, Castle Hill Inn, Trio, and the Waterman Grille] at no cost to us. The rest of the Dinners were hosted and paid for by individual alumni, held a t the Hope Club, University Club and in their homes” he said.

LRI has recently conducted an online survey of participants, which showed an overwhelming consensus of agreement that the conversations held at the Dinners were valuable in and of themselves, even if they didn’t always change someone else’s way of thinking, says Coupe. “We view this as a validation of the Jeffersonian Dinner model, since their purpose is to expose participants to different viewpoints, not necessarily to build consensus,” he says.

LRI continues to hold its Jeffersonian Dinners in 2017 and plans to continue for at least another year, says Coupe, with the goal of eventually host inviting LRI graduates and the general public to participate. We want to eventually spread the word about the value of Jeffersonian Dinners outside Rhode Island with assistance from the Monticello Foundation and the national Association of Leadership Programs (ALP),” he says.

Now, is the time to work together to build a better American and world by learning how to discuss our differences and finding the root of compromise. Jeffersonian Dinners organized throughout the nation my just be the answer to bringing a politically divided country together.

Let’s hope that a copy of “Dear President Trump,” finds it’s way to Trump’s desk. It’s a great read.

Books may be purchased for $20 (domestic shipping included) online at http://bit.ly/dearpresidentbook or by credit card over the phone at 401-273-1574. About Leadership Rhode Island Leadership Rhode Island is a nationally awarded community leadership development nonprofit organization, founded in 1981, with over 2000 graduates across the state of Rhode Island. For more information about Leadership Rhode Island, visit http://www.LeadershipRI.org