Nearly a year has elapsed since the Old Friends Club’s Mercer Island inception and program coordinator Tanya Su said that everyone involved can feel a sense of community happening in the gathering room each week.

The club is designed for people with mid-stage dementia to experience laughter, learning and belonging and gives their caregivers a respite during that time. Presently, 12 attendees between the ages of 70 to 96 come together from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each Thursday at the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church (MIPC).

Mercer Island’s club is part of a statewide initiative to provide social engagement for the attendees through coffee, conversation, art, exercises, music and more. It has grown by leaps and bounds since it began last October.

“People who started off kind of quiet and reser

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