Wisdom Watch Alliance Inc.

09/21/2026

Sharing this amazing resource for anyone in our community who may benefit. Save the date. Organizers at Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services say registration opens soon.☺️

09/19/2026

🚪 Opening doors. Closing gaps. Starting real conversations.

Join Wisdom Watch Alliance Inc. and Commonwealth Senior Living on Friday, September 25, for the next session in our Community Dementia Awareness Series:

💬 “Breaking the Stigma: Real Conversations,” featuring gerontologist Regina Foster of Foster Senior Services.

This session will focus on the skills needed to approach difficult conversations that may arise while navigating cognitive changes. We do not have to face cognitive change—or the conversations surrounding it—alone. 🤝

This community partnership is designed to deepen dementia literacy and help individuals and families navigate cognitive changes with greater dignity, knowledge, and confidence. 🌱

Attendees will also have the option to participate in a free, private cognitive screening. 🧠 A screening is not a diagnosis—it is an opportunity to begin a conversation about your brain health, ask questions, and receive helpful information and resources.

📅 Friday, September 25, 2026
⏰ 10 a.m.–noon
📍 Commonwealth Senior Living West End | 2400 Gaskins Road, Richmond, VA 23238

The event and screenings are free, and registration is requested:
🔗 https://form.jotform.com/262302761332044

Let’s keep opening doors to understanding, support, and informed next steps. 💜

Wisdom Watch Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to raising awareness of dementia and elder abuse, supporting caregivers, and increasing access to cognitive screenings in community settings.



Regina Bridges Foster
Foster Senior Services

09/08/2026

📣 APPLICATION WINDOW OPENS SOON

Wisdom Watch Alliance is preparing to launch the Community Cognitive Screening Corps, a pilot initiative designed to strengthen community capacity for the early recognition of cognitive changes.

The pilot will prepare a cohort of health and human services professionals and students to provide cognitive screenings, brain health education, and connection to resources in community settings where they are needed most—with an emphasis on dignity, cultural humility, and meaningful pathways to care.

Screenings provided through the pilot will be available to community members at no cost.

📅 Application window: September 10–October 1, 2026
📩 Interested in participating? Contact [email protected]

Sponsorship opportunities are available, and charitable donations are accepted to help support training, certification, screening activities, and community access.

Wisdom Watch Alliance Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public service charity with a mission to raise awareness of dementia and elder abuse and to support caregivers.

Early recognition. Dignity. Cultural humility. Community response.

08/29/2026

Seeing this learning opportunity immediately made me think about our neighbors in Eastern Henrico who were displaced by the Darby House fire last month.

Housing instability is real. It is a community health and wellbeing issue, and it can be especially consequential for older adults. Losing stable housing—or living with the possibility of losing it—can disrupt far more than where someone sleeps. It can affect health, safety, routines, relationships, access to care, and a person’s sense of security and belonging.

I immediately registered for this free training and am sharing it in hopes that others interested in aging, community health, housing stability, and the wellbeing of older adults will consider participating as well.

The two-hour, self-paced online training is being developed by VCU Gerontology and the Virginia Center on Aging in partnership with USAging, The Span Center, and Homeward. It focuses on trauma-informed, person-centered story-listening and strategies for countering ageism and ableism.

The organizations and professionals behind this work are well respected, and I am looking forward to learning from them.

Learn more and register: https://homestories.vcu.edu/course/

—Lisa Brownlee Johnson, Co-Founder & President
Wisdom Watch Alliance Inc.

Housing instability requires unique, empathetic approaches. VCU Gerontology and Virginia Center on Aging will soon launch an online training to develop learners' skills in trauma-informed, narrative approaches to care for older adults who are experiencing housing instability.

Created in partnership with USAging, The Span Center and Homeward, the two-hour asynchronous training focuses on person-centered story-listening and offers strategies to counter ageism and ableism. Selected pilot participants will receive a $100 gift card.

Interested in completing the pilot training course? Click the link to learn more https://homestories.vcu.edu/course/.

08/27/2026

🧠 Tomorrow morning: Let’s talk brain health and medications.

What does brain health have to do with the medications we take every day? More than many of us realize.

Join Wisdom Watch Alliance and Commonwealth Senior Living West End tomorrow, Friday, August 28, from 10 a.m.–12 noon, for Opening Doors, Closing Gaps: Understanding Brain Health | Medication Matters.

We’re pleased to welcome Tana Kaefer, PharmD, of Bremo Pharmacy, for a practical conversation about medications, brain health, cognitive and functional changes, questions to ask your pharmacist, and signs that may deserve a closer look.

🧠 Learn something that could help you or someone you love.
💊 Bring your medication questions.
💬 Join the conversation.
❤️ Optional, private one-on-one memory checkups will also be available with trained Wisdom Watch volunteers.

There’s still time to make plans to join us tomorrow.

📍 Commonwealth Senior Living West End
2400 Gaskins Road, Richmond, VA 23238
⏰ 10 a.m.–12 noon

Register here:
https://form.jotform.com/262302761332044

Know someone who might benefit? Share this with them and invite them to come with you.

Dignity | Privacy | Trust

08/27/2026

People’s life stories matter. Our histories matter. And our voices matter.

Here is an opportunity to make those stories and perspectives count in ways that can help further knowledge and improve how we support older adults and families.

Wisdom Watch Alliance is pleased to share a research opportunity for adults age 50 and older focused on advance care planning and sharing life stories. The goal is to develop a new resource or tool in collaboration with older adults.

We know that storytelling is more than remembering. Stories carry family history, culture, wisdom, experience, and perspectives that might otherwise be lost. Who is invited to tell those stories—and whose voices are represented in research—matters.

The survey takes approximately 15–20 minutes, and those who complete it will be eligible for compensation. Please see the flyer for additional details.

Take the survey:
https://virginia.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_curfsy778IFajFI

If you are eligible, we encourage you to lend your voice—and please share this opportunity with older adults in your family, church, organization, and community.

Our stories are part of our history. Our voices can help shape what comes next.

08/24/2026

This Friday, we’re opening the door to a conversation we probably don’t have often enough. 💜💊

How often do you get to sit down with a community pharmacist and really talk about your medications?

Not simply how to take them—but whether they are still serving you well. Whether medications may be interacting with one another. Whether something could be affecting memory or thinking. Whether it may be time to simplify. And what questions you should be asking.

There is a whole universe of support that may be overlooked when we think about making a community pharmacist part of the care team.

This Friday, August 28, Wisdom Watch Alliance, in collaboration with Commonwealth Senior Living, welcomes community pharmacist Tana Kaefer, PharmD, of Bremo Pharmacy for:

Opening Doors, Closing Gaps: Understanding Brain Health | Medication Matters

Come learn, bring your questions, and explore how medication safety connects with brain health and healthy aging.

We’ll also offer optional, private cognitive screenings for those who wish to participate.

Early recognition of cognitive change is invaluable—and creating accessible opportunities for conversation, screening, and connection to resources is part of how we close gaps.

🗓 Friday, August 28 | 10 a.m.–noon
📍 Commonwealth Senior Living West End
2400 Gaskins Road, Richmond

Free and open to the community.

🔗 Register here: https://form.jotform.com/262302761332044

Wisdom Watch Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public service charity devoted to raising awareness of dementia and elder abuse and supporting caregivers.

Please support. Please share.💜







Foster Senior Services
The Span Center
Virginia Center on Aging at VCU

08/22/2026

Pleased to share this learning opportunity, deepening our community’s capacity to care 💜

Our collective wellness grows when more of us have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to support one another.

Please support and share with anyone who may be helped.


Foster Senior Services
The Span Center
Virginia Center on Aging at VCU

Practical skills can make daily care safer, more respectful, and more empowering for everyone involved. Join us for Caring with Confidence: Practical Skills for Caregivers, an upcoming hands-on workshop for family care partners, direct care professionals, and others supporting older adults and adults with disabilities.

Friday, September 11, 2026
9 AM–1 PM
The Span Center
1300 Semmes Ave., Richmond, VA

Participants will learn through demonstration, discussion, and hands-on practice focused on walking and mobility, bathing, feeding, transferring, and toileting. The training emphasizes person-centered, trauma-informed approaches that support dignity and choice.

Regina Foster of Foster Senior Services will serve as instructor. The program is offered by the Thelma Bland Watson Personal Care Aide School, a collaboration between The Span Center and VCU Gerontology and The Virginia Center on Aging. We appreciate these partners for expanding practical education for care partners across Greater Richmond and beyond.

To register, scan the QR code on the flyer, call 804.343.3056, or email [email protected].

08/19/2026

Our mission continues. 💜

At Wisdom Watch Alliance, we are serious about the work of increasing dementia awareness, promoting brain health, creating opportunities for meaningful conversations, and combating elder abuse in all its forms.

We’re excited to launch “Opening Doors, Closing Gaps,” a free three-part educational series presented in collaboration with Commonwealth Senior Living.

Our first session, Medication Matters, will feature community pharmacist Tana Kaefer, PharmD, of Bremo Pharmacy as we explore the important connection between medications, brain health, and cognitive change.

These workshops are free and open to everyone. We hope you’ll join us, and we encourage you to share this opportunity with anyone who may benefit.

Please help us spread the word. Here is the link to register: https://form.jotform.com/262302761332044

Wisdom Watch Alliance, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing brain health, dementia awareness, early recognition, and community education through culturally responsive programs, partnerships, and advocacy.


Regina Bridges Foster

08/08/2026

Sometimes access begins simply because someone creates the space.

Today, Wisdom Watch Alliance celebrated the third and final installment of “Caring with Clarity”—and what became possible because community partners came together.

✨ ✨ ✨

Through our partnership with RVA Financial Federal Credit Union, the Alzheimer's Association of Greater Richmond, and Carnelian Wealth Solutions, caregivers and community members had a place to talk about financial health, caregiving, dementia, and brain health—not as separate issues, but as interconnected parts of the same journey.

Today’s conversation brought that intersection to life. We talked about planning ahead, protecting financial autonomy, recognizing potential exploitation, putting appropriate safeguards in place, identifying trusted people, and having important family conversations before a crisis.

Community members brought their own experiences and questions into the room, making the conversation richer.

Within that same trusted space, individuals were again offered the opportunity to privately and confidentially participate in cognitive screening—another reminder that early recognition can begin simply because the opportunity is made accessible.

As we complete the Caring with Clarity series, we are especially grateful for how thoughtfully these workshops were curated. The people who helped build them believed in the mission and generously shared their expertise, time, resources, and lived experience.

That is meaningful collaboration: People bringing different strengths to the same table and creating something together that none of us would have been able to create quite the same way alone.

✨ ✨ ✨

The series is complete, but the relationships are deeper than ever—and the work continues.

Wisdom Watch Alliance will continue creating opportunities for education, conversation, resources, and early recognition in the places where people already live, gather, learn, and trust.

One partnership. One conversation. One opportunity at a time.

And there is more to come

💜 • 🧠 • 💜





Regina Bridges Foster
Veronica J. Rodgers
Missy Harden