Shelby Community and Senior Center

WHO WE ARE:

The Shelby Community and Senior Center is an integral part of the Shelby Community and surrounding area.  Our main focus lies with the senior citizen population in our area.  We strive to provide a fun, engaging place for our seniors to come socialize, exercise, and continue being active well into this amazing part of life called "retirement".

THE IMPACT:

As with many organizations, we go to great strides to keep our facility open for these folks, many of whom this is their main outlet and location for meeting up with friends and getting in their daily exercises.  Several of our folks plan their entire schedule around OUR offered activities and often-times is the highlight to their week. 

All of our fitness instructors are certified through Silver Sneakers and we offer cardio and core strengthing 5 day/week at 10 a.m. each day. We have recently begun re-introducing our in-house BINGO, currently sponsored by Crestwoood Care in Shelby. 

We have also joined few health plans as a participating fitness center, those being Silver and Fit/Silver Sneakers, Renew Active, and American Specialty Health.  We have decided to keep our general membership fee as low as possible (currently only $65/year) with all of the unexpected changes these folks are already encountering with their doctor visits, isolation and cost of living. We thought it best to be that normalcy for them.  We want this to be a place that is CONSTANT, SAFE, WELCOMING, and INCLUSIVE.  Our philosophy has always been to make this an extention of home.  With home being a bit more lonely recently, we are that refuge for many of these folks during this challenging time. 

With these things things being a positive, we have lost revenue for several of our main money-making endeavors.  A few of the things we had planned last year in 2021 did not happen the way we would have liked. Our dinners have been attended a little less than in previous years, The Vault is no longer using our facility for catering (they have taken a step back to focus more on their internal business downtown) so the meals expenses that we offset (4x/year) with the reciprocal agreement no longer exists so we are footing the bill for all expenses for those meals. We have gotten a couple of sponsors this year for 2 of meals to help with the food costs, but those are rising as well.  (Milliron Auto, WRPC Accounting, Blackfork Mercantile/Well Coffee Shop were kind enough to help with 3 of our 9 meals for 2022). Our carshow and sock hop last October 2021 was canceled again due to COVID surges. We had our carshow and Sock Hop on October 1st and are looking forward to next yeart! It is a great time for our folks and our community to come together and have some food, dancing to 50s and 60s music, and celebrate a time in their lives when things weren't so hectic.  We have fondly named the carshow moving forward in honor one of our longtime members, avid motorhead and former vice-president of our board for several years, Jim Karl. (see him waving in the photo below on one of our bus trips to see the Indians)  #bettertogether #richlandstrong

(The image above will be used for the dash plaques that will be distributed to registered cars for the Jim Karl Carshow in October)

In the past, the spring and summer months have been our greatest way to bring in funding.  We rent the facility out to folks from the community and surrounding area, business organizations and community partners for events like weddings, baby showers, graduation parties, funeral dinners, board meetings, community awareness events, etc.  We are finally seeing a bit of an interest again in people planning small family gatherings. and parties.  

Hosting The Shelby Foundation 100 Women event (top photo) and Preparing for an in-house catered funeral dinner (bottom photo)

MORE TRIPS:

We have been able to begin some of our bus trips again.  We not only offer these trips to our members, but extend that to our community to enjoy as well.

We are #bettertogether!

Pamela Awwiller, Director

419-342-7223

shelbycommunityandseniorcenter@gmail.com

www.shelbycommunityand.wixsite.com/seniorcenter 

https://www.facebook.com/ShelbySeniorCenter/