Who said that be­cause you are no longer 20, your life was over. Hel­lo! 70 is the new 60. I have al­ways ad­mired el­der­ly folks who took pride in age­ing grace­ful­ly. They un­der­stand that age­ing doesn't mean it's time to throw your hands up in the air and sur­ren­der to re­tire­ment. They know age­ing just means there is an­oth­er di­men­sion of life to ex­plore.

One or­gan­i­sa­tion that recog­nis­es and em­braces ag­ing is the Pearl Gomez-James Se­nior Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre. Es­tab­lished in June of last year, the cen­tre, which is lo­cat­ed in Barataria, is an ini­tia­tive of the Co­terie and So­cial Work­ers Or­gan­i­sa­tion in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

As ex­plained by the cen­tre's co-or­di­na­tor, Neila Todd, the Se­nior Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre was de­vel­oped with the needs of se­nior cit­i­zens in mind.&nb­sp;"Our main fo­cus is pro­mot­ing and main­tain­ing phys­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al and men­tal well­ness for se­nior cit­i­zens. "You see life goes on for us. It must not be that we have reached a 'cer­tain age,' so there is noth­ing left for us to do. Se­nior cit­i­zens need to re­main ac­tive both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly to keep them healthy and alive and this is ex­act­ly what the cen­tre is com­mit­ted to-pro­mot­ing long and healthy lives for them.

Ac­tiv­i­ties at the cen­tre

Ac­cord­ing to Todd the ac­tiv­i­ties and pro­grammes at the cen­tre give se­nior cit­i­zens the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence ad­ven­tures they prob­a­bly nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore re­tire­ment.

"All our lives we worked, looked af­ter our fam­i­lies and most of the time we nev­er got the chance to ac­tu­al­ly en­joy life. At the cen­tre we put be­hind us all of life's has­sles and just fo­cus on a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for se­nior cit­i­zens," de­clared Todd.

She added that some of the ac­tiv­i­ties at the cen­tre in­clud­ed tours, gar­den­ing, vi­brant body ex­er­cis­es, tai chi, com­put­er lit­er­a­cy ed­u­ca­tion, hand­i­craft and mu­sic to name a few.

"We al­so have lec­tures very of­ten to keep us men­tal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and we are hop­ing in the near fu­ture to add the­atre to our list of ac­tiv­i­ties as well," not­ed Todd.

Cel­e­brat­ing two years of&nb­sp;Nine Sea­sons and Car­ols

With all na­tion­al fes­ti­vals and hol­i­days ob­served by the cen­tre, Christ­mas is def­i­nite­ly on its list. On De­cem­ber 16, it will host its sec­ond an­nu­al Fes­ti­val of Nine Sea­sons and Car­ols at the St Co­lum­bia An­gli­can Church. Asked what the fes­ti­val en­tailed, Todd said that it was re­al­ly a time of re­flec­tion, and it was tru­ly all about the re­al mean­ing of Christ­mas-The birth of Je­sus Christ.

"Oh, it is no big fes­ti­val with food an' thing you know," she laughed. "It is a gath­er­ing at the church with scrip­tur­al read­ings by mem­bers of the Cen­tre and the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. It al­so en­tails the singing of Christ­mas car­ols," Todd re­lat­ed. Quizzed on what were some of the fu­ture plans for the Cen­tre, Todd as­sert­ed, "We are hop­ing to take our group abroad soon and we are al­so hop­ing to in­crease the size of the cen­tre in or­der for us to cre­ate more ac­tiv­i­ties. "We are cel­e­brat­ing life and we are grate­ful for the chance to con­tin­ue our lives with pur­pose."