Café Plus

Imagine this: you've got a book club meeting in the morning, so you decide to meet your pals for breakfast first. You gather at an attractive, welcoming, cozy neighbourhood café for pancakes and coffee. There are some seniors in the café, but other locals are there too. After breakfast, you step through a doorway from the café into the senior centre where your book club meets. Afterwards, you stay for zumba class. By then you're ready to head back out to the café for lunch. You discover a pierogi cooking demonstration in progress and just have to stay. Someone at your table is trying to organize a neighbourhood walking group; would you like to join? Of course you would!

What a brilliant way to integrate senior centres right into the community. The Café Plus model offers a restaurant open to everyone, but it's also the gateway to a senior centre with all the opportunities it provides to socialize, volunteer, improve health and wellness, find support, have fun, and keep learning. It modernizes the senior centre, breaks down stereotypes, and helps make the neighbourhood senior-friendly.

The Café Plus model has spread to a number of American cities, and even as far as Japan. How about it, Toronto?