Often community housing will host an older and poorer group of citizens, some that are usually disabled in some capacity or another. Often these residents have nothing to do but sit around and watch the television or play cards but it doesn’t have to be that way. When I worked at a community housing center, the director and my boss implemented a craft program for the residents that helped boost the residents’ quality of life and their mental state was also greatly improved. It doesn’t take a lot to implement a similar program in any community housing center across the globe.
First you have to decide on the kinds of crafts and how much of the crafting materials you will need based on the size of your community housing project as well as your budget. Then you will need to consider how you will store all the crafts and materials. Take the time to look online for craft storage ideas, Best Organizers website and Pinterest are two great places to start. Look for organizers that can store a lot with plenty of separated storage because you don’t want the materials to become a big pile of junk in one big drawer. Some of the options to consider are the units that have customizable drawer configurations. This is usually accomplished with separators that fit within each drawer. Some sort of organizational unit is important in this situation for a few reasons you may not have considered.
First of all the kinds of people in community housing really benefit from the structure of planned programs like a crafting program. It improves their mental acuity and gives them a sense of self accomplishment. Forcing them to keep the materials organized can help them maintain some semblance of self-pride as well. You can really change the whole atmosphere of a community housing center with a simple program like the kind I am talking about. It is good for their mental health and their self-image as well.
Another benefit of using some sort of organizational unit is that the employees of the community housing center can spend their time boosting the mental health of the residents and not in the area of organizing and cleaning up after craft projects are completed. If you have to dig through a big messy drawer to find what you are looking for because you don’t have enough space to store it all, you may find that some of the residents are losing interest even before the project has even begun. Get something big enough to store more than what you are even considering because your craft project list will grow as time goes on and you don’t want to be forced to throw materials out just to make room for the new materials. The more projects you have materials for, the more you will start to see the residents exercising their power of choice when it comes to how they spend their free time.
Always try to keep craft time scheduled as regularly as possible. When you first introduce such a program you may need to coax residents to participate, but soon as craft time comes around more and more you will see the people starting to participate on their own. A program like this will boost everyone’s mood in the place.