Resolution 130365

..Title Honoring Center in the Park on its 45th Anniversary and recognizing its efforts to enhance the health and wellness of local older adults. ..Body WHEREAS, Center in the Park has embraced a mission of promoting healthy, positive aging and seeks to create a community of involvement and support for older women and men. For 45 years, the Center has offered a wide range of programs and opportunities to share and create life experiences that also help to build community. Center programs also offer diverse groups of people opportunities to connect and to better understand each other. WHEREAS, Center in the Park programs include community involvement and volunteer activities in addition to a vibrant learning curriculum. The Center also offers comprehensive health and wellness programs and activities, including an on-site fitness center, and evidence-based health promotion and education programs specifically designed for older adults; and WHEREAS, Center in the Park offers an extensive life-long learning curriculum, a vibrant arts and humanities program, a rewarding intergenerational program and; social services, including In home support, energy assistance and housing counseling; and WHEREAS, The Center began with one staff person and seventy-five members in one room and has grown into a staff of twenty-five, an eighteen member board and hundreds of volunteers, offering programs with health promotion, wellness, nutrition, social, recreational and educational components for its over six thousand members; and WHEREAS, Center in the Park continues to be a leader in the provision of aging services and creative programming. Recently, Center in the Park was selected by the National Council on Aging as one of five senior centers nationwide to pilot an Aging Mastery curriculum for older adults, designed to empower participants to make and maintain small but impactful changes in their health behaviors and to test whether or not the use of incentives will serve as motivation. The Center has also received national recognition for innovative community-based research programs to address health disparities and promote self-management, including its implementation of Harvest Health; In Touch Mind Body & Spirit; and, Beat the Blues programs; and WHEREAS, Center in the Park is accredited by the National Institute of Senior Centers, a unit of the National Council on Aging, as a provider of excellent programs, activities and services for its active membership of more than 6,000 and its 1,200 homebound and social services clients, seventy percent of whom reside in Northwest Philadelphia and the rest from throughout the City; now therefore BE IT RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That we hereby congratulate Center in the Park on its 45th Anniversary and applaud its efforts in enhancing the health and wellness of older adults. FURTHER RESOLVED, That an Engrossed copy of this resolution be presented to the Center in the Park as evidence of the respect and sincere sentiments of this legislative body. ..End