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Statement Of Melodye Kleinman
Environmental Protection Agency
Aging Initiative Public Listening Session
Los Angeles, California
April 29, 2003
Melodye Kleinman,
WISE Senior Services, Inc.
WISE welcomes this initiative and is very pleased to be part of this effort to protect human health. It has been our mission for more than 30 years to help people to remain independent as they age. We are actually quite excited about the opportunities that this Initiative talks about in terms of developing programs for senior volunteers to address some of the environmental issues in their community and protect the environment. At WISE, volunteers have been a core part of our programs and our agency. Some of our RSVP volunteers have been very active in community efforts to do environmental projects whether it is energy reduction, and some of the green projects in town, and they are impactful. We look forward to opportunities to work with the EPA to develop some meaningful opportunities. We have had the experience of working with the State on an issue of investment fraud, and we have trained 4000 seniors to go out there and give one on one messages on this issue. Seniors have had conversation with nearly one million of their peers. So we are hoping that the EPA will look in this way to design well thought-out messages and well-thought out training, and let us go forward and start to address some of the issues in the environment that impact everyone.