"It's in the Seed"

ElderSpirit Community Resource Center and Team contributes to the growing national movement in support of "Aging in Community" by encouraging the creation of communities of mutual support and late-life spirituality. Listed below are descriptions of the resource team members plus links to the organizations with which we work.


ElderSpirit Community Resource Team

Monica Appleby - Resource Team Member

Monica Appleby is a resource person for the formation of an ElderSpirit Community. She wrote the grant proposal to the Retirement Research Foundation and after the grant was awarded became the director of the ESC Extension Project. The approach of the ESC Extension Project emerged from the processes of the FOCIS Futures Strategic Planning Task Force of which Monica was member. She has a background in community enterprise, education and development. Monica lives and has been active in the ElderSpirit Community at Trailview in Abingdon since it opened in 2006.

Monica Appleby
120 Elderspirit Ct.
Abingdon, Virginia 24210
(276) 698-3289
E-mail: mappleby@elderspirit.net


Jean Marie Luce - Resource Team Member

Jean Marie Luce is a founding member of ElderSpirit Community in Abingdon, Virginia. She helped develop a model of late life spirituality that individuals and residential communities can adopt and adapt as their own. Currently living in Asheville, she enjoys working with individuals and groups seeking opportunities for spiritual development and personal growth during the second half of life. With training as a Retreat Leader, she facilitates workshops and retreats that focus on conscious aging. Themes include Inner Work, Caring for Oneself, Mutual Support, Community Service, Reverence for the Earth and Creative Life.

Jean Marie Luce
1 Killian Lane
Asheville, NC 28804
Phone: 828-350-8220
E-mail: jeanmarieluce@hotmail.com


Anne Leibig - Resource Team Member

Anne Leibig was a member of the ElderSpirit Community task force that developed the late life spirituality model and the "goodness of fit" form for the ESC self selection process. Through this work she has an interest in training that strengthens awareness of and develops skills in Mutual Support. As a Gestalt Therapist she has led workshops in the United States and Europe. She recently retired from a 25-year therapy practice in Abingdon VA. She is currently writing and training with the Appalachian Gestalt Training Institute. She lives with her husband Dick Austin on a farm overlooking the Clinch River in southwestern Virginia.

Education: MSW, West Virginia University; B.A. Social Sciences Goddard College; Extensive Training in Gestalt Therapy

Anne Leibig LCSW
2895 Sinking Creek Highway
Dungannon, VA 24245
(276) 467-2437
E-mail: abjl@mounet.com


Jean Marie Luce and Dene Peterson - Resource Team Members

Dene (Geraldine) Peterson is the founder and developer of ElderSpirit Community at Trailview in Abingdon, Virginia.

"The main tasks of this role were fundraising and managing the development. I am not an expert in either of these realms but I am a really good problem solver. My idea about fundraising is that there is money to be given away, and why people make a good investment when they give it to me. My idea about development it that it is a complex task for which one is responsible but has very little control.

What I offer those involved in the ElderSpirit Community Resource Center is inspiration to risk the first step, knowledge of resources for public money for affordable housing, how to find likely foundation money, the prerequisites for acquiring land and what it takes to get the buildings built."

Dene has been the administrator of non-profit organizations throughout her professional career. Dene holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Loyola University, Chicago, and a Masters Degree in Higher Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has her certification as a Housing Development Finance Professional.

Dene Peterson
102 Elderspirit Ct.
Abingdon, Virginia 24210
(276) 698-3193
E-mail: dpeterson@elderspirit.net


Cinny Poppen & Roger Golden - Resource Team Members

Cinny Poppen and Roger Golden are certified as workshop leaders by the Spiritual Eldering Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Cinny is an educator and peace and justice activist with experience in Central America, Haiti, and the streets of the U.S. She is a hospice volunteer and brings years of meditation and journaling practice into the exercises of the program. Roger is an ordained Church of the Brethren minister with experience in long-term-care chaplaincy. He has studied at the Gerontological Pastoral Care Institute in St. Paul and trained as a spiritual director while attending seminary. Together Cinny and Roger bring an enthusiasm for and awareness of aging issues with a passion for changing the prevailing view that aging is a bad thing.

Facilitators
Cinny Poppen and Roger Golden
114 ElderSpirit Ct.
Abingdon VA 24210
(276) 492-0503
E-mail: goldenpop60@hotmail.com


Resources & Networking
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2007 ElderSpirit Community®, Inc.