The Dragon Lilies of Flushing
Who: The Nursing Office Extended Arts/Purple Pillars Production
What: “The Dragon Lilies of Flushing”
When: Autumn 2017
Where: To be determined
How: This 90-minute Cultural Comedy Show presents fun and laughter featuring the highlights of “The Graying New Yorkers from Asia.”
We have the Purple Pillars Production team who is responsible for the theatrical/ stage presentation and a People’s Theater pool of artists that provides volunteer actors and actresses for our own production shows and special events.
The show is based on the program of The Nursing Office Services for Aging Immigrants (http://thenursingoffice.com/pagasa-sai/
Preparing and Enjoying the Golden Years/ (Tuloy ang Ligaya)
We are seeing immensely Creative, Innovative, and Vibrant Seniors and Elderly Persons, utilizing their experience and hard-earned skills to mentor young people and activate intergenerational dialogues which inspire and motivate the next generation to create their own legacies. We see these engaged Seniors and Elderly persons building strength for themselves, their families and communities, through Art, Dance, Theater, Literature, and many other expressive cultural forms.
We see active Seniors reach out to invisible aging or Elderly Immigrants seriously challenged by chronic illness, loneliness, isolation, or separation from close family, and by lack of information on access to government benefits and engage them in self-empowering health and wellness practices.
We all look forward to our productive, beautiful and healthy Golden Years!
VISION-MISSION:
Aging seniors or Elderly Immigrants who are educated and trained to advocate for their rights to:
1. Culturally sensitive & competent Health-care services or therapies
2. Fair housing practices
3. Technological literacy
4. Financial independence, and
Who are nurtured and honed in Senior-friendly spaces/environments with family, friends, and the general community of Queens and its surrounding neighborhoods;
Aging Seniors or Elderly Immigrants empowered to support other Immigrant Seniors in the community with similar situations, issues or challenges in their pursuit of optimum health and well-being as well as meaning and purpose in life.
GOALS:
To reach out to invisible Aging Seniors or Elderly Immigrants living in our community who are seriously challenged by chronic illness, loneliness, isolation/separation from close family, and lack of information on access to government benefits, by addressing unmet needs and encouraging active participation in community activities and events.
To provide Space for Intergenerational Dialogue where Elderly Immigrants and Younger Immigrants interact, recall, and document their family and social histories living in Queens, New York.
To encourage Seniors to expand their range of choices & strengthen support networks that help them address their health, housing, psycho-social, financial, or legal/immigration issues. (www.thenursingoffice.com).
PROGRAM OBJECTIVES
I. Intergenerational Dialogue Program
• Connect with Younger Immigrant groups to write, document via various media, their dialogue on family & social histories, by mentoring the youth and/or learning from them how life challenges were overcome.
II. Extended Arts Program
• Provide spaces/venue for Creative, Interactive, and Socializing activities that are Senior and Elderly Immigrant-friendly.
• Conduct Visual arts, Performing arts, or Literary arts Workshops for elderly and aging Seniors as well as younger family members, to encourage individual and group collaborations that nourish and enhance their artistic/literary expressions and skills.
• Connect with neighboring Senior centers, arts and culture centers, and schools to collaborate on art/cultural exhibits and other activities,
III. Inter-cultural Health and Wellness Program
•To utilize Native American, Asian, African, and/or Middle Eastern traditions in Circle Stages, Ethnic Food, Music, Dancing, and Storytelling as Healing Formats and/or Environments.
• Reminiscence can be an activity used with the elderly to promote the telling of memories and the sharing of stories, and helps people connect to one another and practice self-expression. It is helpful as an exercise to stimulate the parts of the brain that are used for long term memory, and can be an extremely helpful activity to prevent / or assist those with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
The challenges and barriers to these programs are enormous; however, through the Nurse-Driven Healthcare Solutions, The Nursing Office is coming up through creative ways to deliver affordable and cost-effective Community and Public Health to the Immigrants of Queens by utilizing resources that are already inherent with these communities, their own culture of sustainability, resilience, self preservation, and the new culture of health, in addition to the resources available from the federal government, the city, non-governmental organizations and similar agencies.
Through our “Once Upon a Time, Ninety Years Later” storytelling, we have a rich oral tradition of arts, culture, and traditions that are determinants of health. Hence, creating this show, “The Dragon Lilies of Flushing,” will be a multi-purpose venue for mental health and other issues treated in ways culturally sensitive to this city’s new immigrants as well as the Aging Asian Communities.
The valuable monetary award will be used to continue the production, secure the venue and effectively market the event and publish a Special Flushing Edition of The Nursing Office Journal with the theme and special report on The Graying of the New Yorker/ The Aging of the Asian Immigrants of Flushing.
The project is on-going and has a 6-month production time line.
Founder's Day
What: Connies 80th Birthday
When: Sept 2017
Where:Volker Orth Garden
The Golden Girls
Tiger Lilies of Manila
Vagina Monologue
"The Graying New Yorker"
Does impending parental mortality look any different from the eyes of their children?Traditional Filipino, Filipino-American, or cosmopolitan New Yorker?
Death can be a comedic illusion, as no one really "dies" and parents & ancestors live on in our genes and DNA, like cutting-edge DNA technology has graphically & scientifically established (See PBS.org's series, "Finding Your Roots," by Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.). The Ancients have known this all along; hence elaborate rituals honoring Ancestors have always been an integral essence of every indigenous or ethnic culture in the world.
The graying New Yorker, living longer and spinning life as never before, must also confront this transition from being just a Parent or relative to that of becoming an Ancestor. The person (or memory of) plays beyond physical life as indeed, we can and have become Who our parents and/or ancestors were.
As America "grays up" along with the world's elderly, death as a comedic illusion in this play focuses a "spotlight" on this transition process and tinges it with wise, balmy laughter and soothing hilarity.
Ludy Resurreccion/ Program Director
April, 2016