Happy spring from Parkinson Wellness Projects! After a long winter, we’re all looking forward to getting out into the sun and taking advantage of the warming weather. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to open our in-person classes quite yet, but we’re looking ahead to doing so in the near future, and we’ve got a lot on our plates in the meantime.
As we approach the start of our first fiscal year as an amalgamated organization, Parkinson Wellness Projects is laying out the groundwork for new and expanded services in the year ahead. At our strategic planning session in February, we identified popular and successful programs in need of expansion, and we’re looking forward to unveiling some exciting new initiatives soon. We are also in the process of finalizing details for you to become formal members of Parkinson Wellness Projects. A proper membership system is a key part of our organization and our community, and we want to make sure that it’s perfect.
We’re particularly excited to be expanding the reach of our support groups, both for people with Parkinson’s and for caregivers. These support groups bring you together and give you a place to be safe and supported (hence the name!) and we want to make sure that they are available to all of you. We’re also in the process of reaching out to neurologists, local counsellors, and medical professionals to develop our new counseling program, which will see to the needs of the entire Greater Victoria community of people with Parkinson’s.
From all of us at Parkinson Wellness Projects, have a wonderful spring. If you would like to sign up for a support group, or if you have any questions about our counseling, membership efforts, or plans for the year, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We would love to hear from you.
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Let’s Get Together For Trivia!
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April is Parkinson’s Month, and at PWP we’d like to celebrate by gathering the community for three fun evenings of trivia and laughter. The Parkinsons Digital Trivia Series will be running three times in April, bringing together members of the PWP community and anyone in the are who is interested for an evening of trivia, community, and learning over Zoom for a safe, distanced social gathering.
Each night will be divided into three sections. Our first section is “Parkinsons and Your Community”, a set of ten questions about Parkinson’s Disease and its effects in the Greater Victoria area. In our second section, “Grab Bag”, we’ll ask a variety of questions on topics as varied as music, sports, politics, and entertainment. Finally, in our Lightning Round, we’ll ask five tricky questions that need faster answers for extra points!
At the end of each night, our top team will receive a gift of tulips in honour of Parkinson’s awareness.
Each Trivia Night runs on a Tuesday evening from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Our first evening will be April 13th, our second on April 20th, and the third on April 27th. You can sign up as a team of up to eight people, or you can sign up individually and we’ll form you into teams at the start of the evening. Participants will be sent Zoom links, and we'll be on hand for any technological troubles that you might have.
Tickets are $20, or you can purchase a ticket to all three nights for $50. You can sign up directly online, or call our office at (250) 360-6800 to let them know you’re interested!
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As part of Parkinson’s Month, we’re not just thinking locally – we’re reaching out to fellow Parkinson’s supporters across the globe. From April 11th through May 8th, people from around the world are coming together to Race the Moon for Parkinson’s!
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Led by Sport Parkinson’s in the UK, this exciting challenge aims to log nearly 1.5 million miles over the course of a sidereal month, outrunning the Moon by walking, running, wheeling, swimming, climbing, or any other form of physical activity.
Parkinson Wellness Projects is excited to be a part of this endeavour, and we’re calling on anyone who is interested to become a Race the Moon Challenger and join us in chasing down the Moon and showing the world what we’re made of. There will be special challenges, shared photos, and prizes for those who take part, and any money that you raise will go towards keeping our programs accessible for our community.
For more information about Race the Moon, visit http://racethemoon.com/, or drop us a line at the office. We’re happy to chat about it, and looking forward to showing our fellow charities what PWP members are capable of! We will let you know as soon as you're able to sign up and support us.
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Coping with Parkinson's:
Grieving & Going Forward
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On Monday March 22, at 1:00 PM, Nancy Payeur will be joining us from Victoria Hospice to facilitate a session on complex grief and how it relates to Parkinson’s. Nancy Payeur is a social worker and counsellor living in Victoria, who has worked in a variety of settings during her career, most recently at BC Cancer and currently at Victoria Hospice, and we are delighted to have her joining us.
This session will involve an overview of so-called "normal" grieving and what this requires of all of us who've suffered a loss, and of "complex" grieving, some elements of which could apply to people living with Parkinson's disease: dealing with the loss of physical abilities, managing medical complexity and facing ambiguity and the unknown are parts of the Parkinson's experience. An overview of coping strategies will be suggested; input and discussion by participants is welcomed.
Those in attendance will be also invited to share their lived experiences. For example: What have they found most helpful in learning to cope, on an emotional level, with this illness? What has not been helpful? What advice might they give to those who've recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's? What suggestions would they give to friends and family members who are providing support?
If you are interested in this session, please contact us by email or call us at 250-360-6800 to sign up.
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Instructor Highlight: Delilah Smyth
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Delilah loves to help people improve their quality of life and find joy in movement. She is a retired ballet dancer, a choreographer, and a dance educator, and has spent the last two years training in the Dance for PD program at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, New York.
In May of 2019 Delilah was awarded a Stanley J. Wertheimer Fellowship by Mark Morris Dance Group.
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The fellowship “provides in-depth training and mentorship opportunities to exceptionally qualified teachers interested in offering high quality dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease modeled after those jointly created by the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group in Brooklyn, New York.”
Delilah danced as a First Soloist with the Louisville Ballet from 1992 - 2007. Upon retiring, she became the ballet’s Director of Education. In that role she developed movement programs for all levels of the Louisville public school system, conducted residency programs in a range of community organizations and led Lecture Demonstrations across the state of Kentucky. An award-winning choreographer, Delilah has arranged pieces for dance, opera and musical theater productions. She worked most extensively with Actors Theatre of Louisville, home of the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays.
Delilah is thrilled to bring her love of movement, theater and dance to this amazing community. When she isn’t in the office taking calls and welcoming guests, you can find her teaching Dance for PD for all levels Mondays at 10:00 AM, Dance for PD for our Pink and Yellow participants on Wednesdays at 11:00 AM, and PWPFit! For Chair classes for our Blue and Green participants on Wednesdays at 12:30 PM. If you’d like to take part in Delilah’s classes, contact us and let us know.
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Hand Dexterity with Shelly Yu: On March 29th, from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM, PWP will be hosting a Hand Dexterity lesson from Shelly Yu, a physiotherapist with Parkinson Society BC. We will stream Shelly’s first lesson for participants, and then she will join the session to answer questions. Participants will then be emailed the rest of the series. If interested, please contact us by email or phone.
Join This Survey on Parkinson’s Self-Care: An international collaboration of seven universities around the world is putting together a major study on Parkinson’s self-care, and they would like your input! Rather than focusing on future medical inventions, this study hopes to curate existing but hard-to-find knowledge to provide actionable solutions for PD patients in order to improve life-quality today.
The study is conducted fully online. Participants are asked to fill in a questionnaire, submit their best practices of self-care, and assess the ones submitted by others via pre-set criteria. The study will not collect any sensitive personal information. Participants can sign to an email list to receive further information about the proceeding of the project, and join a raffle for an Amazon gift card. If interested, please visit the survey link at https://ab3000.net/campaigns/pd/
Easter Closure: A reminder that there will be no classes on Friday, April 2 or Monday, April 5 due to the Easter long weekend, and that our office will be closed during this time. We hope you have a lovely weekend off.
If you have any stories for the PWP Community Information Board, please contact us at donorsupport@parkinsonwellnessproject.org. We're always looking for ways to connect members of our community with one another.
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IMPACT PARKINSON'S offers unique programs, seminars, and events for people in Vancouver and across British Columbia.
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For more Parkinson's resources, visit our Resource page on our website. If you have a resource you would like to add, please let us know!
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