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 By Lara Bricker
Posted Apr 7, 2018 at 4:50 PM

The article below was published by Seacoastonline.com on April 7, 2018
and can be viewed on the Seacoast Online website by clicking here.

EXETER -- As principal of Seacoast School of Technology, Margaret Callahan knows local businesses are eager to hire students from the school. And she’s been working hard to spread the word.

Callahan has been organizing regular industry tours, during which she invites guidance counselors, school administrators, staff and local school board members, to board a bus and visit nearby businesses that have relationships with the school.

Guests on the tours hear firsthand from those businesses about their desire to hire students, during school and after graduation. Many will train students on the job, then hire them permanently, with a number offering tuition reimbursement, health insurance, vacation time and other perks such as on-site gym memberships.

The Seacoast School of Technology, or SST, has more than 700 students from six school districts and 19 towns. Students can enroll in 12 different programs such as automotive technology, biomedical science and technology, digital media arts and culinary arts, with some offering college credit and valuable industry certifications.

“They get here and they’re finally doing what they’re interested in and they’re in a class with kids who are exactly like them,” Callahan said. “Whether they’re the engineering kid or the culinary student who loves to cook. It’s like they’re among their own people.”

Tours have included local businesses such as Lindt and Sprungli, Highliner Foods, Palmer and Sicard, McFarland Ford, the Exeter Inn, and Riverwoods.

“We just see so many students go to college, don’t know what they’re going for, come out of college still unsure and have debt,” Callahan said. “So many of these local industries right in town will hire people full time, with incredible benefits, and pay for college.”

While high school students may be more inclined to get a lower paying job at a coffee shop or fast food restaurant, Callahan says they may be missing the opportunity to find a potential career.

Guests on the March 30 tour visited Riverwoods in Exeter, a continuing care community where jobs include everything from dining room servers, to nursing, to grounds and maintenance to marketing, according to Gina Dickenson, director of human resources at Riverwoods.

  The following letter was published in the 2017 RiverWoods Annual Report. Current and past RiverWoods Annual Reports and Financial Statements can be found by clicking here .

Community and peace of mind; it is at our core. It is our soul and it is who we are. Well before we opened our doors 23 years ago, our founders believed that “community” was essential to living one’s best life. RiverWoods was built and community formed. Over the years, as the physical community grew and changed, our nonphysical community grew stronger. As it turns out, community is more about the non-tangibles than it is about the physical environment. For us, community is our culture, it is our desire to learn with each other, to advocate with each other, to support each other and in doing so, bold ideas emerge. This year, one of those bold ideas turned into a guiding philosophy. 

Two years ago, our residents came together to form a goal group on diversity with a mandate to learn about diversity within our community and to understand how the broader cultural dialogue might impact our community. Over the course of time, the group became convinced that they should change their focus from “diversity” to “inclusivity” as this put the focus on our common humanity rather than our differences. This group of residents drafted an Inclusivity Philosophy Statement as an extension of our Charitable Intent Philosophy. Together, the two set a framework for our moral obligations as an organization, defined a path for our initiatives and guided our actions. 

Three Major Factors to Consider: Timing, Timing, Timing

By Glenn Ruffenach
(Click here to view this article on the WSJ website)

  My husband and I are considering a move to a continuing-care retirement community. We are in our early 70s, and both of us are in good health. But we recognize that we might need help in the future. Is there a “better” or “best” time to settle in one of these developments? Residents in some of the communities we have visited seem decidedly older than us. Perhaps we should wait before moving. Any thoughts?

I’ll talk about CCRCs in a moment. But there is a more important issue here: the risks associated with postponing big decisions in retirement.

At the risk of stating the obvious, time is something we’re running out of as we age. And yet, many of us act as if the opposite were true. Human nature (or, more simply, denial) is a big part of this. It’s much more pleasing to focus on the positive aspects of later life—opportunities to follow new paths, increased life expectancy, travel—than on our mortality.

Continuing care community to be company's first outside Exeter

BY NHBR STAFF

(click to view this article on the NHBR website)

The RiverWoods Group has announced plans to build a new continuing care community in Durham, the first RiverWoods facility outside of Exeter.

Scheduled to open in late 2019 or early 2020, the nonprofit RiverWoods Durham is being built by general contractor Lecesse Construction of West Henrietta, N.Y., which built two of the last three RiverWoods Exeter communities, designed by AG Architecture of Dover and with landscape architecture by Robbie Woodburn of Newmarket. RiverWoods’ development partner is Greystone of New York City and Chicago-based investment bank Ziegler is its financial partner.