CAS

Alzheimers:

This year i am the sole leader of the Alzheimers elective-my co-leader is not in the group as he is busy and i got a chance to improve in this as he often did the planning as he often did the talking in the meetings as he had experience being a leader when i had not. the main skill i needed to develop was to become more confident about myself and learn how to talk to an audience without being intimidated by them. Tho other skills i need to develop are being more organised and being responsible for the group as a whole. The first thing i did was to talk to the group about what we should do. Then i contacted the lady in charge and asked her what she expected of us. In an attempt to reconcile the two i shared the ideas in the group. Although it was last minute, she told me there we should sell raffle rickets for the annual raffle draw on the 25th. I didn’t realize how organised i would have to be and asked peopel to sell as many tickets as theyy could and return what tney sold. I soon discovered that i was all wrong and that each ticket had to be accounted for. I had returned booklets with tickets missing and some books had no names on them etc so i had to run around asking everyone to return what they had sold and what they had left. I learnt from this experience that i needed to develop my skills of co-ordination when doing things like this. However, i was pleased with the way i introduced the group to the task and spoke to the organisation itself about what they wanted done.

I attended the walk and saw some people there from the group. We all had fun and it was great exercise spreading awareness about the disease. I am pleased with my commitment to this elective. The next thing to do is to arrange a presentation and a visit to the home being built as i think the most important part is the 'hands on' contact stuff that shows people you care. It easy to give money but to go and spend time with them is more difficult.