[ad_1]
Starting this July, folks identified with Alzheimer’s earlier than age 65 could have a brand new alternative to attach with others whereas exploring the good open air via a program known as SOAR. The identify is an acronym for Shared Outdoor Adventures for Resilience.
Offered by the UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center, SOAR will function free month-to-month hikes within the Puget Sound space for small teams of individuals with younger-onset Alzheimer’s. Each participant brings alongside a member of the family or pal.
A lifelong recreation specialist from Seattle Parks and Recreation will lead the hikes. Optional transportation is offered. Hikes will probably be as much as 3 or 4 miles. The kind of terrain will fluctuate among the many totally different hikes to supply a problem however nonetheless be accessible to a variety of members. Volunteer naturalists will be part of periodically to speak about vegetation and animals within the area. SOAR will conclude with a nature retreat at Seattle’s Camp Long in June 2024. Everyone who participated all year long will probably be invited.
While round 10% of individuals with Alzheimer’s are identified earlier than age 65, most help providers are geared towards folks at a distinct stage of life. As a end result, youthful folks navigating Alzheimer’s can really feel remoted and alone. SOAR goals to alter that.
“At the Memory and Brain Wellness Center, we have persistently seen an enormous demand for programming tailor-made to the strengths of individuals with younger-onset Alzheimer’s. These requests embrace alternatives for bodily exercise that higher meet their wants,” mentioned program co-lead Marigrace Becker, program supervisor for Community Education and Impact on the Brain and Wellness Center. “We’re excited to launch SOAR to help households on this area.”
To supply SOAR, the Brain and Wellness Center will work in shut partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation, identified for being the primary parks and recreation division within the nation to launch a specialised dementia-friendly recreation program in 2014.
“I consider deeply within the energy that nature and motion mixed have and am thrilled to get to activate that energy with the SOAR neighborhood,” mentioned Brooke Sciullo, a Seattle Parks and Recreation lifelong recreation specialist who will lead the hikes.
The SOAR program is made doable because of a 2023 Innovation Programs Grant from the I’m Still Here Foundation.
The basis’s founder, Dr. John Zeisel, mentioned, “This is a brand new alternative for the ISH Innovations Programs Grant. We are thrilled and excited to see SOAR come into being
SOAR will launch with a kickoff occasion from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday, July 12, on the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. Activities embrace a program overview, snapshot of the month-to-month hikes all year long, group actions, lunch, and guided walks. People with younger-onset Alzheimer’s and their households are inspired to come back study extra about this system.