Della tenderly turned the plastic pages of her photo album, which are laden with photos upon photos of her life. They ranged from formal, black and white photos of a large family posed around their matriarch in the early 40s and 50s, faces serene with respect, to colorful, beaming photos from the early 2000s of the same siblings with grey in their hair. While the photographs show a wide span of time, one thing remained consistent—the siblings’ affection for one another.  

Della and her fellow seniors at Jin Huo Community Center, an adult daycare and senior center affiliated with ASIA, are participating in the memory book project in which they create scrapbooks of their family photos so that they can preserve memories and share them with their friends and families. Seniors from the Chinese, Nepali, and Ka’Ren communities excitedly decorate their scrapbooks with crafts, stickers, and beloved photos in this project designed to care for and combat dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

 

This project is funded by the generosity of Jin Huo Community as well as Elizabeth Malone of In The Light Wellness and Benefits. Elizabeth is a health insurance broker who is dedicated to supporting overall community wellness and connecting underserved community members with eligible benefits and selecting affordable healthcare plans for their circumstances. Elizabeth partners with multilingual providers and organizations to educate Cleveland’s Chinese-speaking community and promote wellness programs.  

When she heard about the memory book project from ASIA’s Behavioral Health program specialist, Mary Dee, she enthusiastically gave her support. 

“Any time I can help with these initiatives, I love doing that,” said Elizabeth, “because it brings me so much joy to see [the seniors] holding their memory books and smiling and that they’ll have it in their family with generations. It was an exciting project to be a part of.”  

Whether the seniors had photos stretching all the way back to their youth, or were mainly including photos taken in recent years, they were full of unique personal stories. While they picked out their stickers and colors, Imani and Abishak, interns from the Children, Youth and Family department, sat down with their elders and helped them with their books.  

They cajoled with the seniors across language divides and asked them questions about their lives—from their childhoods in their countries of origin, their arrival to the United States, to their experiences of raising their families in a new country.  

“I’m enjoying it, I have been having lots of fun,” Imani said after interviewing a Burmese-speaking elder about her children. Abishak echoed the sentiment: “I really like it; this is the first time I did something like this and it’s great.”  

The Children, Youth, and Family department will compile the anecdotes to publish a booklet of Akron’s refugee and immigrant elders’ stories. When the booklet is completed, they will share it with the families of the seniors and the students of ASIA’s summer camp program so that the younger generations can understand and appreciate their elders’ lives.  

Abishak, who is from the Nepali-speaking community, was interviewing the Bhutanese-Nepali seniors about their journey from Bhutan to the United States when their stories prompted him to wonder about his own parents’ experiences. His family is also refugees from Nepal, and he did not know their stories. Working on this booklet inspired him to ask his own parents about their lives and past.

  

We cherish the Memory Book project as a group effort across ASIA departments, affiliations, and friends that connects the young and the old. The stories and memories that our elders pass on to younger generations are the most precious of inheritances.  

Support unique and relational projects like this by giving to ASIA and sharing our story with your friends!  

You can contact Elizabeth at (216) 287-2117 to see if you qualify for any benefits.