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We have a group of residents that are in a type of assistant living.  I do work in a facility for retired nuns.  At the moment we have a group of residents about 25 and noone wants to participate in activities.  a small group attends coffee klatch and bowling, but that is all.  They do not like room visits either.  The community members take them out for lunch and dinner.  We are looking for ideas that will motivate the residents to attend.  Please help.Thanks

This is a great idea. I have also learned that even residents who don't participate will join in our programs if there is some sort of food involved (cookies, ice cream, drinks, etc.)

Are most of your residents retired nuns in this community, or is it a mix? Perhaps you can get together with the other members of the community to create opportunities for the nuns to feel of value - mentoring a student, partnering with a pre-school, assembling packages for NGOs the org supports, running the rosary group, working together on an advice column, taking care of a garden or pet visits.... hymns could be very popular, how about a hymn sing-a-long a few times a week for breath control and socialization?

They are all great ideas.  We have done a survey in the past, but none seemed to work out.  Yes, they are all retired nuns.  We have 33 that are in the nursing home section.  We have no problem gathering those residents.

I think it would be great to come up with a way to help those in need.  Maybe we should do another survey or have a group meeting to see what they enjoy.  Most of the sisters throughout the house love bingo.  That is a sore subject for me.  I tried to change the rules however they want to keep it the same.  We go through prizes like there is no tomorrw.  They have three wins per game.  Anyway I will try what everyone shared and see what we can do.

I, too, work in an assisted living facility for retired nuns.

Our best attended events are prayer services, our monthly news and views, monthly chat with a member of the Congregation's leadership team, or a talk by one of the non-retired sisters about her ministry.  They also respond positively to requests for simple service projecnts:  stuffing envelopes, wrapping Christmas presents for children, cutting up fruit, husking corn and the like.

We usually have one purely social event weekly.  We have good attendance for our monthly birthday party and holiday activity and usually decent attendance for a themed event or wine and cheese social.

Our sisters aren't big into games.  Their favorites are our monthly bingo, "left, right, center dice game or adaptation of a TV game show, especially when a few staff members from the facility participate.  We do other dice and domino games (and probably would have better attendance if we added donuts to the billing>  Smaller groups enjoy word games and modified versions of board games.  Our present census aren't interested in cards.

Word games and memory boosters bring out a small, but faithful group.  This is also true for more physical games (bowling, bocce,  vballoon volleyball etc.)  Many of our memory impaired enjoy the latter catagory.  A lot of cheering for each other.  Some will come, mostly to support the memory impairded.  This group had dwindled, but is reviving.

A small dedicated group comes for painting, making pins with clay, making fleece pillows for children in the hospital, crochetting squares for afghans for the homeless, shawl ministry, making "Nifty Knitter" hats for the poor, baking cookies for an after school tutoring program,

We have just begun a group that goes monthly to our Health Care Center (in the same complex) to sing, "our musical strollers".  Another small group comes for a spiritual book discussion club. At other times some have enjoyed simply listening to poetry,  classical music, or reminiscing.

I hope something here will prove helpful to you.

I work in Baltimore with the School Sisters of Notre Dame.  We are divided into two houses so to speak.  We have around 100 residents.  We have a 32 bed LTC unit, about 25 beds in our wellness center which is basically assisted living.  The rest are retired nuns.  They take care of all religious activities.  We are having a hard time with attendance in our Wellness unit. They do come to coffee klatch and of course anything with food, but if we offer too much food they think it's too much.  We have Bingo twice a month.  Of course they would like it more, but they want big prizes and we just do not have the budget for that.  This month we are adding some charitable activities.  It's frustrating b/c many times they turn us down when we come up with a charitable activity...I know, very surprising.   If you could email your calendar that would be great.  My email address is ataylor@ssndba.org.  I will email you mine when I receive your email address.  Thanks.