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Galloway, NJ – Stockton’s Successful Aging Festival in May will have an added component this year thanks to a project developed by the Therapeutic Arts with Older Adults class along with the Stockton Center on Successful Aging (SCOSA).

Students enrolled in the course taught by Gina Maguire set up a creative art project for older adults to on March 22 in which they painted kindness rocks, which are rocks with positive images and messages written on them.

“We wanted to present to the older adults a therapeutic art hobby that is easy to do and inexpensive,” said Maguire.

All participants also got to socialize and enjoy lunch while being entertained by Stockton’s singing group Stockapella.

The group was supposed to place the rocks around Stockton’s campus in the afternoon, but because of poor weather conditions that was postponed until SCOSA’s Annual Successful Aging Festival on May 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Campus Center.

When the kindness rocks are hidden on Stockton’s campus, student and passers-by are encouraged to take a picture of the rock they found and share it on the SCOSA’s Facebook page. This will allow all the positive messages from the kindness rocks to be enjoyed by everyone.

“We did this project because it’s a creative outlet,” said Maguire. “It is also an opportunity to teach the older adults about Facebook by showing them our page and what we do with it. Our goal was to get them involved socially, cognitively, and physically with this project.”

Briana Gilliland from West Orange is enrolled in the course and helped plan the service learning project.

“This is a good way to get the older adults out and exercising in a fun way,” said Gilliland.

Reported by Julia Sus

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Contact:
Diane D’Amico
Director of News and Media Relations
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Galloway, N.J. 08205
Diane.DAmico@stockton.edu
609-652-4593
609-412-8069