For the past nine months, Hadassah has been working with a community of post-menopausal women in the Gonen neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

The health improvement project, an initiative of the "Women's Health Center" of Hadassah, began last November, and is a collaboration among Hadassah, the Jerusalem municipality's department of aging, and Eshel, an organization providing social services to the elderly and new immigrants, and was made possible by a grant from Keren Moresha, the Legacy Heritage Fund.  

The goal of the project is to offer programming for elderly women, many of whom are confined to their homes, to provide them with activities and social contacts, shown by many studies to improve physical and mental health, and their quality of life.  Prof. Neri Laufer, Navah Braverman, and Hagar Bar-El developed a unique training course for volunteers, to teach them about community intervention.  Women who responded to newspaper ads were interviewed, and a group was selected.

How it is working…

After they completed their training the volunteers chose the fields in which they were most interested, and then began to develop programs to benefit the community. 

In the "Home Safety" area, volunteers were further trained by Yad Sarah, and began to visit the homes of elderly neighborhood women.  They were readily accepted and were successful in identifying dangerous household situations and unsafe conditions that made accidents likely.

The "Walking the Neighborhood" group led elderly women on walking courses, to help them know and enjoy the city, and to increase physical fitness.  This group received their field training from Eshel.

The "Community Lectures" group started work with a July 2 lecture by Prof. Aryeh Ben Yehuda about improving the quality of life for aging women.  Attendance was high, and the residents enjoyed both the lecture and the sing-along that preceded it.

The "Physical Activity" group is exploring organizing groups of women to learn about and practice different kinds of physical activities important to the health of post-menopausal women.

In order to maintain the interest and dedication of the volunteers, a group was organized to be responsible for helping them learn more information and put it into practice.  The last group toured the small streets of Nachalot in the footsteps of “Kulam Hayu Banai.”  All of the groups work out of Beit Hoffman Community Center in the neighborhood.

What about the future?  Volunteer activity will be expanded, allowing more groups to be formed, including one using computers to improve cognitive function using games.  Another will focus on healthy cooking.  And the staff dream of opening a café in the Center that will serve as a social meeting place for the women of the neighborhood, and keep the Center a vibrant, active place.