This year marks the third year of successfully running the Dementia Awareness Program at Havergal College. An enthusiastic group of 8 new and experienced student volunteers and 2 dedicated advisors travelled to Briton House retirement home in Toronto weekly on Wednesdays to visit residents with dementia. Each week, our volunteers meet with various residents and played card games, did puzzles, had conversations, and enjoyed each other’s company. The residents certainly seemed to enjoy and look forward to our visits, as did our student volunteers. The student volunteers learned a lot by improving their communication and problem solving skills all while having fun and forming intergenerational relationships.
A highlight of this year was our music performances! Our student volunteers performed various songs accompanied by our teacher advisor on the keyboard. Even though we were not the best of singers, the residents greatly enjoyed our performance and many stopped to listen, clap and even sing along. We even met with a former Havergal graduate and her son who stopped by to introduce themselves after our performance!
On behalf of the Dementia Awareness Program, we would like to thank all of our student volunteers for their dedication to this program. We would also like to thank our staff advisors from Havergal College for their continual support. Finally, thank you to the staff at Briton House for allowing us to visit weekly and for all of their support in this partnership.
To our readers, thank you for following our monthly blog series this year, and we hope that you have been able to learn more about the exciting new research surrounding dementia, as well as getting to know some of the prominent local female scientists in this field through our researcher profiles. We would like to sincerely thank Dr. Herrmann for his continued support and guidance over the program and this blog. Additionally, we would like to thank him for connecting us with the researchers and scientists featured in our researcher profiles – who have inspired and taught us so much about the importance and need for dementia research. For more information on dementia, you can also follow Dr. Herrmann’s “Memory Doctor” blog for dementia caregivers at:
On behalf of all the Havergal College students involved in this program, thank you for your continued support and engagement with the Dementia Awareness Program. We look forward to another successful year of the Dementia Awareness Program next year, as we continue to raise awareness of this illness and visit individuals with dementia weekly to engage them in meaningful interactions.
Professor Nathan Herrmann and Student Executive Team
Chair Selina Chow
Vice-Chair Clarissa Yu
Vice-Chair Olivia Nadalini
Nathan Herrmann MD FRCPC
Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Lewar Chair, Geriatric Psychiatry
Head, Division of Geriatric Psychiatry
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
