Saturday ‘Rocks’ at the St. James Community Grandparenting Hideaway

Starting Date: January 13th - 10 a.m. to 12 noon.

Program will run the second and fourth Saturday of every month.

Moms and Dads, here’s an opportunity for your children to enjoy some time with “Community Grandparents”. St. James United Church has a great number of seniors with life skills such as cooking, computer use, baking, dancing, reading, knitting, singing, crafts, acting, sewing, woodworking etc. These volunteers are eager and looking forward to a chance to interact with the younger generation.

It is a learning/teaching outreach program that is non-denominational in nature and all school age children are welcome to attend. This is a great opportunity for children to interact positively with seniors. This kind of intergenerational contact can help kids develop higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence.

Families are so busy these days that sometimes these very ordinary things are just missed. Maybe your child doesn’t have the opportunity to share special time with a Grandparent. It may well be the couple of hours that you, Mom and/or Dad, need to get the household chores done, do the shopping or just have a little guilt free time on your own, knowing your children are in safe hands.

St. James will have in place all the proper ‘Duty of Care’ documentation and will run on an ‘Open Door’ policy to ensure you of the safety, quality and integrity of this community outreach program.

There was an article in the Toronto Sun recently that spoke of a very similar program. Community Care East York, a seniors’ agency in Toronto, started their “Grandparenting” program in 1985. It is now offered in 12 East York schools with 100 senior volunteers sharing the hobbies and skills they love with some 800 young people.

If you and your children would be interested in or have further questions about this program, we would love to hear from you. You can also just drop in on any 2nd or 4th Sat. of the month beginning Jan. 13th 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

Phone: St. James United Church 436-5225 or Linda Winson 431-7149 or Roberta Noble 436-2462