Friendly House Announces Affiliation With National LGBT Nonprofit

Portland’s Friendly House has announced that its Gay & Grey program is now an affiliate of SAGE (Services & Advocacy for LGBT Elders), a national nonprofit headquartered in New York. SAGE is the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults. Friendly House will become only the third affiliate on the West Coast, and one of 22 nationwide.

According to Friendly House Executive Director Vaune Albanese, becoming a SAGE affiliate has been the organization’s goal for over a year: “Being a part of the SAGE network will connect Friendly House and our staff members to leaders in the LGBT aging field from different parts of the country.”

Added Albanese:

“After ten years of struggle to develop, grow and sustain this program, we feel like we are finally playing with the big boys. All of a sudden, things are happening fast, and we are proud to be on the front edge of the wave. Our Gay & Grey participants deserve it too – they’ve been working right alongside with us to get to this place.”

SAGE offers support in areas such as fundraising, building advocacy programs and strategic communications and has also developed programs that its affiliates can easily replicate or adapt. For instance, several affiliates have implemented the SAGEWorks program that prepares LGBT older adults with modern employment skills to succeed in today’s job market.

Friendly House’s Gay & Grey program works to enhance the lives of older GLBT community members through education, advocacy, outreach and resource development.

Recently, Gay & Grey began a new service — offering assessments of residential facilities for older adults, using a proprietary multifaceted assessment tool, to discover the culture, policies, diversity of staff and outreach efforts of a particular housing establishment (retirement community, nursing home, assisted living, etc). Because of such innovative initiatives, the program was just awarded $5,000 from Pride Foundation – one of only six organizations whose grant request was fully funded, from among 30 applicants.

The 2012 Gay & Grey PDX Expo, a resource fair devoted to the health, housing and social service needs of LGBTQI seniors, is set for May 12.

Pick up the Jan. 13 issue of Just Out for more on Gay & Grey and Friendly House.

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