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Tempe designated as 'age-friendly' with push for services for seniors

The city of Tempe has long been known as a dementia friendly community and last year, AARP designated it as an Age-Friendly community. The city is continuing to push for more services for seniors. 

Access — whether to community events, health care or technology —  is something many older adults can’t always enjoy. Now the city of Tempe is expanding its access to technology and dementia support.

Through the Connect Tempe program, the city plans to issue loanable laptops and add more hotspots for residents in Tempe and Guadalupe. They also plan to offer more tech classes in Spanish.

The city’s dementia friendly memory cafes will also include support groups in Spanish. Tempe also plans to launch a new initiative aimed at the area’s BIPOC community to help reduce social isolation.

KJZZ senior field correspondent Kathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.