Old School Meets New School Fuller Center at The Volen Center Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

August 30, 2023

Contact: Toni Hassinger
305-240-8894
thassinger@fullercenterfl.org

Boca Raton FL., August 30th, 2023 – The Fuller Center and The Volen Center are proudly hosting a ribbon cutting ceremony on September 7th to inaugurate their new intergenerational day center at The Volen Center. This new intergenerational program is aimed to help seniors interact with children through play and educational interaction.

The Brain Bowl Events, Inc. Volunteer Committee Project announced Fuller Center as the $100,000 beneficiary for this project last February during their annual Brain Bowl Luncheon. In June, an additional donation from Junior League of Boca Raton was received in the amount of $15,000 for books and supplies. And in July The GEO Group kindly donated $2,500 towards the intergenerational program as well.

The funds will enable Fuller Center to establish a full-time early education program at The Volen Center where seniors and children will interact, learn, play and thrive together. The project will benefit the community by expanding the opportunity to 28 children, ages 3-5 years, to access needed childcare at a time when affordable care is difficult to find.

The intergenerational center is open to all children in the area, including staff members of The Volen Center, from the hours of 7:30am to 5:30pm Monday through Friday. Affordable tuition, meals, and snacks are available to students who enroll. Open enrollment is available and parents are urged to contact Elen de Paula @ edepaula@fullercenterfl.org immediately for more information.

The need for intergenerational centers and their positive benefits have been thoroughly studied while access to them continues to be limited. Fuller Center at The Volen Center will be one of the few intergenerational centers of its kind in southern Palm Beach County.

“Our teachers and staff have worked with The Volen Center staff over the past several months to carefully curate a room where children and seniors feel welcomed to interact and learn from each other,” said Ellyn Okrent, CEO of Fuller Center. “I am very proud of what we have put together and I look forward to hearing about all the great memories and moments that will be created here.”

Isolation and loneliness are one of the major contributors for disease and death within seniors. There are several social, emotional and cognitive benefits that older minds and younger minds experience when they have the correct environment and opportunity to interact with each other. Intergenerational centers provide a means for seniors to feel valued and loved while providing young children an experience to develop empathy, prosocial skills and receive valuable mentoring.

“We are all very pleased to collaborate with Fuller Center and excited to host this ribbon cutting ceremony,” said Elizabeth Lugo, CEO The Volen Center. “At The Volen Center, we strive to provide our seniors with the very best care and programming and we feel that this intergenerational program will bring an air of joy that our seniors will be very pleased with.”

For more information, please contact Elen de Paula at edepaula@fullercenterfl.org or call (561) 391-7274, ext. 121.

About the Fuller Center

For more than 50 years, the Fuller Center’s mission has been to embrace, educate, and empower hardworking, under-resourced families and children to reach their full potential. We build a positive future through education for the more than 900 children (infants through teens) that we serve annually, as well as 600 of their family members. The Fuller Center reaches families in more than 40 zip codes throughout Palm Beach County, as well as northern Broward County.

65% of Fuller Center parents – serve as essential or frontline workers, working in hospitals, retail outlets, restaurants, and hotels. They are our bus drivers, store clerks and cashiers, farmworkers, delivery drivers, security guards, bank tellers, office workers, healthcare workers, home health aides, hospital orderlies and cafeteria workers, and childcare and eldercare workers.

Our programs help empower children to start school prepared, succeed academically, and break the generational cycle of poverty through quality early childhood education, afterschool and summer camp programs, our new private elementary school and teen leadership programs, and comprehensive, family-centered support services. They also empower parents who are essential to keeping our local economy open and who provide the vital services we all count on.

The Fuller Center also offers mentoring programs and adult on-the-job training, coaching, and employment support, and no-cost transportation from 12 area schools to our campusbased after-school programs. We serve more than 1,800 nutritious meals and snacks daily.

In addition, Fuller Center provides opportunities for local colleges and universities to place undergraduate and graduate students in internships and child development practicums.

About The Volen Center
Serving from Broward to Palm Beach County, The Volen Center enhances the well-being of South Florida seniors by education and advocating on their behalf, and by providing health care and supporting services that meet their physical, emotional, social, and psychological needs.

About Brain Bowl Events, Inc.
Brain Bowl Events, Inc. is a volunteer-based non-profit organization whose mission is to help raise awareness, promote understanding, and provide support to those living in our community and their loved ones coping with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, the 100 types of Dementia, or a related neurocognitive disorder.