It's a day designed to get area seniors out of their apartments.  The Reno Housing Authority partnered with several community agencies to put on Senior Day at Silverada Manor on Friday.

"Thanks to our partners, the Reno Housing Authority is able to offer a lot of extra services for our senior residents," said Brent Boynton with the Reno Housing Authority.   "The Center for Healthy Aging has put together quite a program to get seniors out, get them healthy, involved and active, and the realtors from Berkshire Hathaway/Drysdale Properties  have donated time and money to make that happen."

The goal - to get as many seniors as possible out of their apartments for a few hours of fun.

"It's getting people out of their apartments to socialize, to get some food and some fun," said Dr. Larry Weiss, President and CEO of The Center for Healthy Aging.  "And that will hopefully help create some relationships that will last, so that they will come out more often.  Being isolated and alone leads to depression and to suicide, which is very high in this area, especially among the elderly.  They become isolated; they just stay in their apartment and they've probably had a lot of losses in their life.  They all need help in some capacity but are unwilling to seek it out."  

Volunteers are donating their time and expertise to offer things like haircuts, manicures, computer and smartphone courses, immunizations, games and crafts.  For a lot of the volunteers, it's a cause that hits close to home.

"When we were deciding on what to do for community service day, we thought of the senior community because a lot of our parents are to that age now and we would like to give back to seniors less fortunate than our parents might be," said Heidi Somhegyi with Berkshire Hathaway/ Drysdale Properties.  "All of us are shutting our businesses down across our brokerage houses and giving back to our community today."

The hope is to hold more events like this and get the residents here into the habit of getting out more.

"Isolation is a big problem here so when we had 150 people sign up for this event, that shocked us," said Cathy Steed, Elderly Services Administrator with the Reno Housing Authority.  "This is fantastic and the seniors keep coming in and talking about it, too.  It's the little things that make the different - what we take for granted every day is a big treat for them."

The Center for Healthy Aging: https://www.addinglifetoyears.com/

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