More than 100 citizens attended the first South Orange Senior Citizens Forum on Sunday, October 26, including guests, members of the South Orange Board of Trustees, Village staff and vendors.
The South Orange Senior Citizens Advisory Committee hosted the town hall style aimed to address the needs of Village senior citizens.
“This is an opportunity to bring everyone together, share information, and really try to understand the needs of this population and what the Village needs to do to address them,” said Scott Egelberg, Chair of the Senior Citizens Advisory Committee.
Members of the Village Board of Trustees — including Village President Alex Torpey — staff from Village administration, and department heads introduced themselves to attendees and provided an overview of existing services, answered questions, and received feedback on senior services improvements.
Representatives were on hand to share information from various groups that provide senior services including: South Orange Village, EIES, the Essex County Division of Senior Services, the Essex County Time Bank Exchange, Friends of the South Orange Public Library, Grandma K.A.R.E.S., the Healthy Bones Program, Homewatch CareGivers, the Jewish Community Housing Corporation of Metropolitan New Jersey/Daughters of Israel, the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) Center of Essex and Hudson Counties, the South Orange Maplewood Adult School, the South Orange Village Center Alliance and the Village to Village Network.
“As the Village continues to explore opportunities to attract and retain senior citizens in our community, we know how important it is to hear directly from stakeholders,” said Trustee Sheena Collum, a liaison with the committee. “Today’s forum hosted by our Senior Citizens Advisory Committee really gave us an opportunity to share information about existing services, answer questions, and gather feedback on short term and long term goals to address the needs of our senior community. There’s a lot of work to be done but I know we’re up for the challenge and today’s forum really showed us that we have such great partners and volunteers in the community, equally as committed and passionate about this topic, that will help guide us in the right direction.”
For those who were unable to attend the event, a video of the forum will be made available on southorange.org.
Here’s part 2 of the video:
Click on the photos below to view a gallery of the event:
