A $2,500 donation from the Cochrane Rotary Club to Bethany Cochrane will help continue a valued service for their dementia residents.

The funding will help maintain subscriptions and programming centred around its IN2L content-driven engagement.

IN2L stands for It's Never Too Late and helps create meaningful experiences for older adults by connecting them to the world around them. Specialized software feeds images to a huge screen that is best described as a giant interactive iPad.

Monica Johnson, Bethany Cochrane site administrator, uses the example of how it helped one of their dementia residents, who was a dairy farmer in his younger days.

He awoke extremely agitated one morning, felt the need to go and milk the cows and was actively seeking a way outside.

The recreation dept. was able to redirect him to the IN2L to view farm settings and talk about them. Doing so helped him relax.  

Reminiscence therapy is just one application. It can be used for other things, like viewing movies, connecting to YouTube, and playing games.

"It can do a lot of different things," says Johnson. "It's a really cool tool for the recreation department as well as our volunteers."

Bethany Cochrane recreation therapist Jason Johnson says helps redirect residents from a negative to a positive thought process.

"You can use it for groups, you can use it with individual people, and it's something that volunteers and families can use. It's been an indepensable tool," he says.

The funding received from the Rotary Club is invaluable, says Monica Johnson.

"It allows us to keep those subscriptions and that programming going, so it's very highly valued for our dementia program. A lot of our residents enjoy using that equipment."

Melissa Engdahl, director of the Rotary Club's community services committee, says providing such support is the service club's directive.

"Any way we can help the residents, not-for-profits, and organizations in this community to help support the people that they support better is our mandate. I can't think of a better initiative to get behind."