Emma Case (00:00):
Welcome to Inside The Senior Alliance, a podcast exploring resources and issues in the field of aging. I’m Emma Case, Planning and Advocacy Specialist at The Senior Alliance, the Area Agency on Aging, serving Western and Southern Wayne County. Joining me today is Jim Mangi, Founder, and Director of Dementia Friendly Saline and care partner to his wife. Jim, thank you for joining me today.
Jim Mangi (00:19):
Oh, you are very, very welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Emma Case (00:23):
As of 2023, almost 7 million people are living with some form of dementia in our nation. Many of them still live in their own homes and in our communities. At Dementia Friendly Saline, you’ve made it your mission to help those living with dementia be a part of the community they live in. You are also a recipient of the 2024 Governor’s Service Award for your dedication and service to the community and to our state. Can you tell us a little bit about Dementia Friendly Saline and what inspired you to create dementia friendly communities?
Jim Mangi (00:50):
For over 10 years, Emma, I took care of my wife on her dementia journey, and we had mixed experiences living in the community, you know, shopping, dining, going to concerts. And then about five years ago, shortly after my wife Kathleen began living in a memory care facility, I decided to help other people on the journey who are still able to enjoy life out there in the community, to enable them to have an easier, more dignified time living with dementia in the community. That’s how it got started.
Emma Case (01:29):
What makes a city or a community dementia friendly?
Jim Mangi (01:33):
Well, the national organization that fosters dementia friendly communities, it’s called Dementia Friendly America. That outfit has a long academic definition of dementia friendly communities, but the one that I like best is that a dementia friendly community is one where people walk toward, not away from a person with dementia. And that happens when there is broad awareness throughout most sectors of the community. Awareness about dementia, so we’re talking about the city government, we’re talking about the faith community, we’re talking about the business community, the residential community, and the general public. Primarily having an awareness of what dementia is, the kinds of difficulties that a person living with Alzheimer’s or one of the other dementia diseases, the kinds of difficulties they have out in the community, and the easy practical ways that businesses, organizations, and the general public can help persons with dementia to have an easier time of it. That’s what makes a community dementia friendly.
Emma Case (02:51):
What are some of the specific programs or initiatives that you have implemented that have been particularly impactful to the dementia community?
Jim Mangi (02:59):
These days, Dementia Friendly Saline, we’ve been up and running about, as I said, about five years, subtract a couple years for the pandemic pause, but these days we run about eight or nine different programs, and we’re doing it in two main lines of effort. In one line, our awareness line, we offer dementia friendly information sessions free to people and any kind of organizations in a community to help them understand the difficulties that a person with dementia may experience and their care partners and how best to make interacting with them as friends and neighbors or as customers or as fellow members of a congregation, how to make interacting less difficult and more dignified. Sometimes, for example, we also offer educational lecture series for the general public, but we more often frequently offer tailored information sessions, things like lunch and learn for a business, and we’ll tailor it for the particular kind of business, a realtor, a bank, a retail store, or a church.
Jim Mangi (04:07):
Last Sunday I was out at a church here in our area during their coffee hours talking to them about being dementia friendly. So that’s our awareness efforts. In our social programs we offer opportunities for persons with dementia and their care partners to have some fun together to meet and connect with other persons on the dementia journey. So in this category, oh my, we have twice monthly memory cafes. We have the Nation’s first dementia friendly movie program. We have apparently the nation’s first dementia friendly art fairs. We are doing several dementia friendly live theater events. We have dementia friendly shopping events, and we just recently inaugurated our dementia friendly chorus. We also have an innovative program that we call our Caregiver Companions, Friends for the Journey. So we have quite a number of programs that we believe are making a big difference in the community.
Emma Case (05:15):
With all these programs that you have, how do you involve individuals with dementia, their families, their caregivers, and care partners in the planning or in giving feedback on the community improvements?
Jim Mangi (05:27):
Our founding board of directors includes persons living with dementia, along with current caregivers such as myself and others, and our critically important crew of volunteers also includes persons living with dementia. And most of our programs include frequent calls for feedback from our participants in the form of just comments or written feedback, and we welcome any sorts of feedback. In the course of that, we’ve gotten some really important suggestions from people living with dementia and their care partners about new programs and new features that we should incorporate in our programs. So we’re really, really happy that we’ve asked for and listened to the comments of our participants.
Emma Case (06:18):
You talked a little bit about the awareness in the community. How else do you work with local businesses, service providers, faith organizations and residents in Saline to make your community more accommodating for people living with dementia?
Jim Mangi (06:30):
We are doing a lot of networking through the various folks that I and the board of directors and our staff and our volunteers know of. We just do all sorts of networking, but also I have one of our staffers, her job is outreach to the business community, to the faith community et cetera. And we are in fact working with a number of different churches. We’re pleased that several churches approach us to have us help them. We’re really pleased that other entities, like the Saline Recreation Center this past week reached out to us to ask us to help them put together a dementia friendly recreation afternoon. The Kiwanis Club of Ann Arbor, which is a very large, very active unit of the Kiwanis, they run a huge thrift store and it was their idea and we were happy to work with them. Their idea to have a dedicated dementia friendly shopping afternoon where they close the store to the public and just make it available for folks living with dementia and their care partners, that has been a success the three times we’ve done it, and we look forward to a continued collaboration with organizations like the Kiwanis doing things like that.
Emma Case (07:48):
What kinds of challenges have you faced in promoting dementia awareness, and how have you addressed them?
Jim Mangi (07:52):
Oh, there is still, sadly, such stigma associated with Alzheimer’s or any of the other dementia causing diseases. This stigma is totally unjustified, but it is still strong. Our message is that it’s a disease. It is no more shameful to have Alzheimer’s or any other dementia than having kidney disease. So we say about dementia, it’s a disease, not a disgrace.
Emma Case (08:24):
For other communities looking to become more dementia friendly, what advice or best practices would you suggest?
Jim Mangi (08:29):
First thing, please go ahead and contact us Dementia Friendly Saline. We’ll be happy to come out and talk to city councils, to civic groups, to church groups, to the general public in the public libraries meeting room or whatever. We’ll be happy to talk about what being a dementia friendly community means, and frankly, how easy it is to be dementia friendly. It’s important, but it’s not hard.
Emma Case (08:56):
Where can our listeners go to learn more about your organization or how they can get involved?
Jim Mangi (09:01):
We are happy to help other organizations and other communities, and we have. I’m talking to you from Saline, Michigan a tiny little town, 9,000 people near Ann Arbor, but we have reached, we have worked with communities such as Rochester Hills. We’ve worked with certainly other communities here in Washtenaw County, but we’ve also gone as far afield as the Village of Vassar up there by the Thumb and the Village of Portage out by Kalamazoo. So folks, please contact Dementia Friendly Saline at df. That is as in dementia friendly, dfsaline.org. We’ll be happy to work with you.
Emma Case (09:45):
Thanks for joining me today, Jim.
Jim Mangi (09:47):
Oh, this has been great. Thank you so much for your interest, and it’s been a pleasure visiting with you.
Emma Case (09:52):
If you have any questions about our services or programs that The Senior Alliance offers, you can call us at (734) 722-2830 or email us at info@thesenioralliance.org. Information about our agency or the programs and services we offer can be found on our website at www.thesenioralliance.org. On Facebook, we can be located by searching for The Senior Alliance. Finally, our X, formerly known as Twitter handle is @AAA1C. I’m Emma Case. Thank you for listening to this episode of Inside The Senior Alliance.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Inside The Senior Alliance as a production of The Senior Alliance and Blazing Kiss Media.
