Once a month the Children's Museum of New Hampshire in Dover invites a group of adults for a bit of socializing. Although they are welcome to join them, it isn't necessary to have children in tow.
The invitation is to the museum's Alzheimer's Café — a place for people living with Alzheimer's, their family members and care partners. Where they can spend time with friends and forget about the unrelenting challenges they face.
It may seem incongruous to have such a program in a children's museum, but for Paula Rais, it's a perfect match. "It's a welcoming, open, inclusive place," she explains. "It's also physically accessible and colorful and intergenerational."
Paula is the museum's Vice President of Development and Community Engagement. She also oversees the Alzheimer's Café. About four years ago, she read an article about an Alzheimer's Café at the Children's Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It caught her eye for two reasons.
"One," she says, "because in my previous job we had a pilot program called the Elder Arts Initiative. We often worked with people who have Alzheimer's and [other] dementias. It also caught my eye because it was in conjunction with a children's museum."
She contacted Dr. Jytte Lokvig, who founded the Santa Fe Café, and with her encouragement got the ball rolling in Dover. "It started out small," she says. "We put posters up, we put something in the paper and we had one husband and wife who came. We had some refreshments and served coffee and sat around and talked and got to know each other. There were more facilitators and volunteers than visitors but we had a great time. They came back the next month and a few more people came and it just kept building."
