Blog Link:
I really liked this authors post, as I found it inspiring and hopeful. This short post was about advocating the elderly in the DRC. The author is communications officer with Helpage.org, which helps people around the world with poverty, discrimination, rights, etc.
The author shares the experience she had in the DRC where her and her group worked with the elderly in the DRC. Together, they did a workshop that involved professionals from print, radio and television journalism. Their goals were not only to raise awareness of older people, but advocate the rights they had as well. They said that the purposes of these advocacy programs, where to: give them a better understanding of older people’s needs and abilities in emergencies, build relationships and help newspaper publishers take older people’s issues better into account and come up with practical ways that the workshop participants can integrate ageing and older people into their work.
I think that it’s really heartwarming to see people like this come to improve the lives of the elderly. As someone who has volunteered a significant amount of time with the elderly, including his own grandparents, I truly appreciate it. I like the idea of utilizing as many forms of media as possible to get the word spread. I mean, for topics such as emergencies and workplace integration, I certainly hope many people will take time to listen to these advocacy programs, as they are truly useful.
The article goes on to state that many people who did stop by and participated in the workshops and listened to the elderly people’s stories decided “then and there” to help the elderly in their communities, particularly those that were left vulnerable.
This organization even has an action plan to help include older people in the media. Their steps are as follows:
-working to ensure issues such as the protection of older people are included in the media
-giving older people more of a voice by reporting on their lives and including them in interviews
-creating a short program on older people that could be shown every day on television at peak time to raise people’s awareness of older people
-researching and publishing articles on specific themes, such as older people and care
It would be really great if we had strong media programs like this for our elderly in the US. I’m positive it would do just as much good as it will for the elderly for the DRC.
