By Amanda Estes
Staff writer

    As Scarborough’s new senior services coordinator, Cecelia Duchano has the task of expanding and revitalizing senior programming in the community. Her position is a new creation within the town’s community services department, meant to accomplish the first short-term recommendation made in last year’s report from the Senior Advisory Committee. Duchano said part of her job is to work toward implementing the other short-term recommendations the committee put forth.
    Duchano comes to the position with experience in working with Scarborough’s senior community. She currently works part-time at the Southern Maine Agency on Aging, where she helps to educate seniors about the prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D. She started out at the agency as a member of AmeriCorps’ VISTA program, in which an individual serves full-time for a year at an agency, working to reduce poverty through education and health programs. During that year, Duchano worked on a financial program designed to help seniors save money on prescriptions. She began working in Medicare Part D education after she became an employee of the agency.
    Duchano said one of the reasons for the big learning curve with Medicare Part D is because the program is “based on computers.”
    “Some people didn’t want anything to do with it because they thought the computer would explode,” she said. The frustration toward the computers convinced her that computer classes should be an important part of the senior programs she hopes to have running on a regular basis.
    She said the senior college program has been a beneficial program and she would like to see it become established more locally. Currently, participants in the program are bussed to the USM campus in Portland. Duchano said educational programs are important because seniors represent a “huge knowledge base that is lost.” She said it is “important to recognize the talent and knowledge of seniors.”
    “I’ve heard from people who say they don’t know what they would do without it,” said Duchano about senior college. She said it gets people who might otherwise be stuck in the house, out and active.
    Duchano said there have also been requests for exercise and art classes. She said she hopes to have an exercise program running by late summer or early fall. Duchano’s first experiences working with seniors were through art classes she taught to elders in public housing in Portland. Duchano did an internship at Spiral Arts in Portland during her junior year at the University of New England. Spiral Arts is a non-profit organization that seeks to make art accessible to all people. Duchano serves on the organization’s board and she will be working with them to develop future art programs for Scarborough seniors.
    Increasing the number of senior trips is also a priority, Duchano said. She said she had just seen a big boost in phone calls about the upcoming April trip to Jilsen’s Farm and Sugar House in Sabbatus. She said approximately 30 people attend the weekly Wednesday events. Improving attendance, she said, is a “matter of talking it up and offering different programs.” Part of her position, she said is to take some of the burden off of the Senior Series program.
    “We’re working on getting the administrative pieces over to me so they can spend more time dreaming,” she said. Looking ahead to the summer, she hopes to have a senior trip running every week. She said there have been a lot of requests for a clambake on Cabbage Island, which is near Boothbay Harbor. The summer mystery trips, in which seniors are kept in the dark about the trip until they arrive at the destination, are also popular.
    To help get more programs into place, Duchano is currently working on creating volunteer descriptions for an advisory board of volunteers. She said she is looking for volunteers in places where “communities already exist,” such as the Rotary, Lions clubs, and churches. The board will add to the work that Senior Series is currently doing.
    When asked if it is difficult to develop programming with the lack of a central community center or senior center, Duchano said it is the programs that are most important at this point. She said she is in the process of looking at “different resources in the community and getting some of the communication processes going.” She is looking into all of the sites in the community that are currently hosting senior programs.
    “There is lots of strong desire for a center,” she said. The process, she said, is “not doable in the next two days, but over the next few years.” Her current focus is getting the word out about the different programs that the community is currently able to sustain.
    Duchano’s efforts to spread the word about the programs will include the development of a website and a newsletter. The website will start out basic as an extension of the town’s Web site. She said she would like it to include an active calendar, descriptions of events, and an e-mail section for seniors to submit questions. For the newsletter, Duchano would like to beef up the current senior page that goes out with the community services brochure.
    “I would like to get something out more often with activities, articles from people in the community, and a health section,” she said.  The newsletter will help to meet another of the Senior Advisory Committee’s recommendations, which is to improve communication about services and programs in the community.
    “The goals are definitely in process,” Duchano said. Following our discussion, she said she had a meeting with the Senior Services Implementation Committee to move forward with the volunteer descriptions. The next step will be training the volunteers and increasing their prominence in the community.