How can we change the world and grow individually by learning about the circle of life? Today's guest, Stacy Shewey, shares the blessings and unique opportunities that spring forth from lending our lives to facilitate intergenerational well-being.
Stacy’s career began with Hyatt Hotels and Resorts. During this time, she was awarded the prestigious Circle of Excellence Award, which is reserved for the hospitality industry’s best sales associates. Stacy is an entrepreneur who built a successful hospitality company where she owned and operated hotel properties, freelanced as a hotel feasibility consultant, was a consultant/investor on a 60-million-dollar resort start-up, and contracted out as an event planner. She left the hospitality industry to become an Executive Director of an assisted living and memory care community, where she gained experience in the senior living industry. She is a visionary who takes ideas and brings them to life. After being in the senior living and hospitality industry for her whole career, she felt called to take her experiences and knowledge and serve those in developing nations. We all know we are in an aging crisis in the US, but few realize we are in a global aging crisis where there is no plan to care for the vulnerable and forgotten senior population. It was with this revelation Hands 4Life was born. In 2016, Hands 4Life founder Stacy Shewey traveled to Haiti as part of a mission trip. On that trip, she visited a newly constructed community with an assisted living facility for the elderly. Witnessing firsthand the tremendous need in the developing world for high-quality, compassionate care for older adults, Stacy began a journey leading to the creation of Hands 4Life – one of the few nonprofit missionary organizations focusing on caring for the elderly in developing nations. The need has never been greater.
Stacy shares how growing up in an intergenerational home inspired her love for seniors. She relates her story of selling her hospitality business to run an assisted living facility before hearing God's call to care for those in developing countries who have no one to care for them.
Shewey details statistics declaring the world is in a global aging crisis. Sixty percent of the world's senior population live in developing countries. By the year 2030, the number is expected to rise to eighty percent. Developing nations lack the resources to care for the elderly. Seniors in these countries often suffer from neglect or abuse. A dire need for education about proper diagnosis and care of aging adults in impoverished areas exists. The younger generation often migrates from their area of origin to seek better employment, leaving the elderly with no one to care for them.
Shewey states the solution to this global crisis is to teach children about the circle of life. Parents care for children, then kids grow up to care for their parents. The Hands 4Life model offers seniors an opportunity to impart wisdom and job training to orphaned children. Kids learn to honor and respect their elders while receiving valuable life skills.
Stacy explains that when you serve others, you find true joy and purpose. Hands 4Life has identified a five-acre site in Nigeria to build their first campus with intergenerational homes, workshops, medical facilities, educational resources, and more. Seniors will receive 24-7 care. Missionary parents will care for the orphaned children. Seniors will utilize the workshops to impart their trade skills to the younger generation. When kids reach adulthood, they are equipped with job and life skills along with Biblical truth.
Hands 4Life also envisions training interested kids on how to run for-profit senior care facilities of their own after outgrowing the nonprofit starter program.
Stacy notes that intergenerational studies have existed for a long time, but says the concept of creating an intergenerational campus with homes is cutting-edge. Shewey describes the great need as Hands 4Life prepares to launch, including childcare experts, senior living experts, sponsors of individual kids and seniors, corporate sponsors, and monthly sponsors. Mission trips are in the works, as well, and sponsors can visit the children and seniors they've supported in person. Sponsored residents of the program will send videos with personal messages to their sponsors and sponsors can respond.
To learn more about Stacy visit her website: https://h4lworld.org .
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