A Pakistani's Thoughts on Her First Visit to ...Westborough

Photo: Sadia Hussain and Uzma Naz. Credit: Charlene Arsenault

Sadia Hussain and Uzma Naz were among 14 Pakistani officials who responded to an ad in one of their newspapers to visit the States—Massachusetts specifically—as part of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Municipal Association and the United States Education Foundation in Pakistan. These officials visited the states in May of 2013, and others from the group stayed in Framingham, Medford and Brewster.

Hussain recently submitted to Westborough Patch a journal on the experience:

I didn’t ever think that I would be able to visit a senior center in USA, even it was on my priority. But it was interesting that I have visited this center in a small town of Massachusetts.

When Jim Malloy, town manager of Westborough, told me that “tomorrow we are going to visit a senior center,” I had no words to express my happiness.

It was a very sunny day of spring when I entered in the senior center of Westborough. Around 9:30 Alma Demanche director of senior center welcomed me. After the introduction with each other, Alma started to brief me about this center, which was established in 1989. The mission of this council on aging is to promote social , recreational and educational activities and provide advocacy and assistance to Westborough’s senior center and their families. This council is an eleven member board, which is appointed by the Board of Selectmen and each appointment is for a three year term. This council on aging acts as a policy setting body for the senior center and the most interesting thing was that no single member of the council will assign duties to the staff. The director is responsible to report the council.

The Senior Center of Westborough is playing a vital role in supporting community-dwelling older adults by offering a diverse array of recreational, nutritional, health, and social service programs.

But I was interested to know about the relationship among the senior center, individuals and community and I got the answer of this question after visiting that senior center. I saw there are lot of relationships between the senior center and community, like “Meals on Wheels” program where residents volunteer to bring meals (prepared and the distributed through the senior center) to senior citizens that are “shut-ins” (what we refer to seniors that are not able to drive but are still independent enough to live on their own).

The stated goal is to ensure these seniors have a healthy meal, but I’ve volunteered for this several times and the real benefit is providing company. Many of the volunteers and elderly shut-ins become friends and its really providing regular visitors and companionship that the programs real success is. 


Further, the town manager shared with me that they also vote every year at a Town Meeting to give the seniors the highest exemption possible on their property taxes (so all other voters do this, knowing they are picking up the difference) allowed by law. This helps seniors stay in their homes by keeping their property taxes at an affordable of the seniors,

The most interesting thing that I found is that there was men’s breakfast club, and according to them, spring had sprung and it was time to get out and enjoy the sunshine. So to enjoy, all men are invited to the monthly men’s breakfast club.

I was also invited on that breakfast, but, oh, I missed it because I left Westborough on May 5, 2013. I really missed a great conversation with a great group and couldn’t see how the senior start their morning in a great way.

In my point of view senior center should be acted as a bridge over which people and ideas, services and resources pass freely, back and forth, to the benefit of the entire community.

At the end of my visit I met different groups of seniors. Many old women were busy to knitting and were making very beautiful sweaters. Did we ever think what our elders want from us just attention? So if we have no time, then please send elders to participate this type of healthy activities. Because I strongly believe our elders are our assets so please don’t lose them till they’re alive.

When I went back to my country I requested that my government establish this type of senior center in Pakistan, without any gender discrimination.

Sadia Hussain, a Pakistani social scientist and a gender expert, has nearly ten years of practical experience in managerial development work, both in public and private sector. She has expertise in scanning all the development projects/schemes, plans, proposals and budgets for ensuring adequate women-friendly infrastructure provisions at the time of designing structures/building plans. Hussain also identifies ways to involve local community in the planning and implementation of project activities, and develops cooperation and coordination between line departments and NGOs/CSOs. She is skilled in: gender analysis; gender responsive budgeting; project planning, implementation and management, including report preparation; monitoring and evaluation; and, training management, including planning, need assessment, design, curriculum preparation on gender and training of trainers.