Elder Craftsmen conducts art and craft classes and carries out community service projects in the New York City region, serving seniors who benefit from companionship and accomplishment. Our programs include the following:

Community Service Projects

♦ Community Service Projects for Senior Groups

Members of senior groups learn to make handcrafted items, which they donate to a local charity of their choice. We provide the instructors, the materials and patterns, and the overall project administration.

♦ Civic Engagement Projects

For independent seniors in the NYC area to make practical items that are contributed to NYC charities that help the needy.

♦ Elder Crafters Helping Others (ECHO)

ECHO crafters from all over the country make items for people in need in New York City . Participants may donate or receive payment for the items they make.

We provide the instructions, as well as some of the materials. participants work from home, and deliver the completed items to us during the two project periods each year.

♦ Intergenerational Projects

Seniors and preteens or teenagers come together to produce handcrafted items, like a pictorial quilt, baby blankets, or puppets.

This program is designed to help ease the generation gap and to increase understanding of and appreciation for the other group. It also provides seniors the opportunity to be creative, while passing along their life experiences and cultural heritage to younger generations.

As part of this program, we also offer workshops for Grandparents as Caregivers support groups, which provide grandparents and their grandchildren a creative setting for working and having fun together.

Crafts Training and Workshops

♦ Train the Trainers

In Train the Trainers we offer free workshops in ethnically diverse, highly marketable crafts to staff and member representatives of senior groups in the Metropolitan New York City area. Participants are expected to teach these crafts to members of their groups

Each Spring and Fall semester, we present several new craft projects of one to three sessions each. Workshops are held at various locations near transportation.

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♦ Crafts Programming Service

Through this service, we provide professionally taught crafts workshops directly to members of senior groups. We bring these workshops free of charge to senior groups in New York City . This service is also available on a fee-for-service basis. A catalog of more than 50 craft workshops is available on request.

♦ Elder Crafters Teaching Others (ECTO)

We recruit experienced senior crafters to teach at senior centers that don't have craft instructors. These crafters receive a stipend to teach these workshops for us. We provide the program free to senior groups in New York City. We also make ECTO available on a fee-for-service-basis.

Interested in crafts programming for your members? Elder Craftsmen can help!!

Artists in Residence and Recollections Projects

Participants document their neighborhoods, themselves or their lives via appliquéd wall hangings, collage or paintings, which are then exhibited publicly.