It has been another exciting month at the SSAC. We have welcomed our new Board members and embarked on the pathway to strategic planning to ensure a sustainable future which involves offering appropriate activities and maintaining our economical food services whilst being financially viable. All of this is eminently attainable with the appropriate planning. To this end, all the new Board members as well as Centre manager Gill Smith and Food Services Manager Emily McPherson, attended a retreat on Saturday April 6th at the new Silverstone Care Centre.
Thanks go to Marg Penney, a SSAC member and Silverstone resident for her tremendous help in arranging this along with our Vice-president Bert Carswell. This was a 5-hour session facilitated by the vastly experienced paid facilitator, April Struthers. This is the first step towards our strategic planning process. It was also invaluable as an introduction of all the board members to each other. We now have a great feel for their past experiences, motivation to be a SSAC Board member, and how each of them wishes to contribute moving forward.
April presented her report on the session this last week and provided a great template for us moving forward. As a result, we have a Strategic Planning committee headed by Bert Carswell along with Marg Penney that will advise the Board on the planning process.
Usually there is one Board meeting each month. However, in May there will be the normal Board meeting plus another focussed purely on the strategic planning.
The vast majority of our membership has embraced the MySeniorCenter (MSC) login and its “wallet”. On occasion, some of our greeter volunteers with the kiosk by the front door are reporting that they have little to do, because so many members are scanning in, checking in to their activity and moving on without any assistance needed. In the Fall we will be implementing the MyActiveCenter on-line system which will allow for on-line registration in activities and secure on-line payments into your wallet amongst other features. In the meantime, the MSC system is invaluable for our forward planning. In a few seconds, reports can be generated about all aspects of our membership activities. Treasurer Alison Kowalewski was looking into the reporting functions and found that we currently have over 1,700 MSC registered members and over 1,200 of them are regular users of the centre every week; 44% of our members are in the 70 – 79-year-old age range.
How to plan for our increasing membership numbers is probably our most pressing issue to address. How this affects Food Services is highlighted in another article in this issue. Be assured that we are in a good financial position and are committed to providing a large range of fun and stimulating activities, and continuation of offering economical food services supported by the Affordable Lunch program. So please come and enjoy “Your Home Away from Home” as often as you can. If you know someone who doesn’t get out much, bring them as a guest for lunch and let them enjoy our uplifting environment.
Please note that on Wednesday, May 1st we will be moving to our summer hours of operation: Monday to Friday 9 am – 3 pm. Note also that the kitchen will be open in the Summer during Chef Emily’s well-earned vacation.
