2008-08-26 23:46:02 -

- for AgeSong Pat Harden or Kim Kellogg, 510-635-4150 Eleven years ago this month, AgeSong's Hayes Valley Care residence, a 47-bed community in San Francisco, pioneered a new, holistic approach to elder-care that focuses on the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of its residents. To mark the success of San Francisco-based AgeSong's approach and its new plans for the Hayes

Valley neighborhood, AgeSong is hosting an 11th anniversary celebration on Wed., Aug. 27 from 4 to 6 p.m. The event will be held on the rooftop garden of its Laguna Grove Care residence, 624 Laguna Street, one of two AgeSong communities in San Francisco.

Highlighting the festivities, attended by residents, caregivers and neighbors, will be Zorka Thompson, a longtime resident, who is celebrating her 100th birthday and receiving a special commemoration from San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi.

"Our therapeutic environments focus on what is 'right' with our residents, despite their cognitive and physical challenges," said Nader Shabahangi, founder and CEO of AgeSong. "We do not believe that a person's essential humanity is impacted by forgetfulness, confusion, disorientation or physical limitations. We are careful not to impose mainstream standards of normality on our elders. Rather, throughout our AgeSong communities, we want to create a new standard that celebrates aging as maturing and understands becoming an elder as a goal of life."

AgeSong is a family-run group of assisted-living communities for seniors. It was founded by Shabahangi and his two brothers in 1995, whose vision was guided by the type of living environment they wanted to find, but could not, for their grandparents. They combined their diverse backgrounds in psychology, law and theology to form AgeSong, and opened the doors of Hayes Valley Care, their first residence, in August 1997.

The organization currently manages three residential communities in San Francisco and Oakland, and is developing two larger new residences in San Francisco (2011) and Emeryville (2010). Among many other influences, its building designs and programming are guided by the philosophy of a 19th century Bavarian theologian named Sebastian Kneipp, who advocated five pillars of wellness to human health: water, nutrition, plants, exercise and balance.

100-year Old to Receive Birthday Commemoration from Supervisor
Mirkarimi