00:00:00Age With Rights and Dignity
00:16:48Embracing Age and Lifelong Learning
00:24:09Age in Workplace and Pass It On
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Welcome! This is ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host for the Wisdom at Work podcast: Elderwomen, Older women and Grandmothers on the Move!
What follows is a special and exciting 10-part series... 'Age With Rights and Dignity' - 10 interviews in which we will hear from older and younger advocates from different corners of the world. These committed champions and advocates will share with us why they care about the rights of older persons, and what they are doing to help bring a new United Nations Convention on the rights of older persons into being - for you and me, no matter how old we are now!
English
United States
SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Welcome.
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This is Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host for the Wisdom at Work podcast.
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Elder Women, older Women and Grandmothers on the Move.
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What follows is a special and exciting 10-part series.
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Have you ever thought about how human rights plays an essential and meaningful role in our older age?
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Well, you're in the right place.
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You're listening to Age with Rights and Dignity 10 interviews in which we will hear from older and younger advocates from different corners of the world.
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These committed champions will share with us why they care about the rights of older persons and what they are doing to help bring a new United Nations Convention on the Rights of Older Persons into being, for you and for me, no matter how old we are.
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Now Join the movement and raise your voice.
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Go to the Age Noble Human Rights Day 2024 blog to find out more that is A-G-E-K-N-O-W-B-L-Ecom and sign the global petition for the UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons.
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I'm also excited to introduce you to two wonderful guest interviewers, younger women who are committed to these issues and will be joining me in this series to interview some of our esteemed guests Faith Young and Kira Goenis.
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Thank you for joining us, enjoy this special initiative, and my thanks to Margaret Young, the founder of Age Noble for bringing this opportunity to us to hear from these important guests who promote the human rights and the dignity of older persons the world over.
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Hi, my name is Faith and I'm a guest interviewer on today's Wisdom at Work podcast.
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I am studying at university and I'm also currently volunteering at the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older Persons, and I believe in protecting the rights of older persons and I'm looking forward to interviewing our guest today.
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Hello, my name is Kira and I'm a guest interviewer on today's Wisdom at Work podcast.
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I'm currently a university student studying psychology, with plans to specialize in gerontology.
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I care deeply about supporting the mental health and rights of older adults.
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So I'm really looking forward to speaking with our guest today.
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Today, we are joined by Moira Allen.
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Moira is based in Paris and she is living a fulfilled life as a lifelong learner.
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Originally from South Africa, she built her career in journalism, public relations, life coaching, training and managing an occupational health organization in France.
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She founded the Too Young to Retire Network in Europe and went on to co-found, with Jan Heigli PhD, the Pass it On Network, a global grassroots, strength-based network of positive aging pioneers advocating for the rights of older people, the adaptation of society to the new opportunities and challenges of longevity, and defying ageism through action.
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She is the international coordinator of the network that has spread to 65 countries on the five continents, with regional networks, including a very vital one in Southern Africa.
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Moira serves on several boards Old Up, an avant-garde French association whose aim it is to give meaning and utility to our longer lives.
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Eureg, a non-profit NGO with 150 member organizations in 27 European countries, and the International Longevity Center, france.
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She leads Old Ups Europe and the World Global Group, intent on learning from how other countries are coping with our global demographic phenomenon.
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She serves on Age Platform, europe's task force on the rights of older people.
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She is on the mission committee of CLEREN, a major European player in the care industry that has adopted the status of a purpose-driven company, combining their economic and social roles.
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She's also a director of the Wilton's Foundation in South Africa, dedicated to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and to lifelong learning opportunities for all in rural environments.
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Moira, thank you so much for joining us today.
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We're thrilled to have you here and truly appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.
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Let's start by diving into your journey.
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Do you mind sharing a bit about yourself and what inspired you to step into the world of anti-ageism and anti-discrimination advocacy?
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Well, I guess the simple answer is that I'm growing old, like everybody around the world, every single day, and I've always been fascinated by the life course approach.
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I studied psychology and that was the one aspect that interested me and I kind of had a wonderful anticipation of what I would be like when I got into that stage where they say you stop and you reflect and you go back on your life and you appreciate it, and so forth and so on.
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And I think that's why I get so angry when I see that whole stage of life, which is the last half of life Firstly, being lumped from 60 to 100 as one big group.
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You know, it's almost as if you put babies to 40 years in the same group.
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Do me a favor, but that's what happens.
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That really makes me angry because there's such interesting variations in age.
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I think that was basically the first thing.
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Then I listened to Dr Bill Thomas, who's a very well-known geriatrician in the United States, and he just had this wonderful way, to my mind, of explaining it.
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He said that from the time you're born and you come out of your mother's womb and you get that first clap on the back and you take your breath and you start breathing and you start living.
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Everyone has two imperatives and those imperatives are growth and development.
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And those imperatives stay with you until your very last breath and they move along with you, obviously as you develop and as you grow and you move from stage to stage.
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And life is a progression and that's what the what ageism doesn't understand, because it's.
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It's just so amazing.
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You know, every single person, without exception, grows older day by day.
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You know's no mystery.
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That's what's happening.
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And then, just as a little smirk, when you think of how much time it takes to change any policies.
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All the work that we're doing is for you guys, for the younger people, because by the time you get through, I hope and pray that we will have a convention at the United Nations on these issues.
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That's so wonderful.
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Yes, do you mind defining what ageism is and what that may look like?
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Well, I think ageism, simply defined, is a social construct against age which puts the emphasis onto age.
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So you are classified as age and that means that you're too old or too young to do something, and it's a completely socially constructed concept.
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Ageism, which is different from age discrimination, which is actually the acts that discriminate against people, it's one of the last isms that's acceptable, socially acceptable.
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But discrimination, for example, says that you can no longer drive a motor car after such and such an age, or you can't have a house loan after such and such an age, or you can't have a house loan after such and such an age, or your employer stops thinking of you as a valid person for ongoing learning when you get to 45 or 50.
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That's real discrimination, Whereas ageism itself tends more to be on the emotional side, the perceptive side.
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You know how people perceive aging through just stereotypes.
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Would you say that ageism, I guess, leads to age discrimination, or ageism is kind of the root of a lot of this other lack of the right to self-autonomy and dignity and being able to make your own decisions as an older person.
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I think that they kind of go hand in hand really.
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And it's self-defeating to have ageist attitudes which lead to discrimination and discrimination to the ageist attitudes.
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You know, it's just, it's against the human progression of life.
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We're all going to be old and we're all going to go through different stages of life et cetera.
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What I think about a lot is that ageism manifests when you're younger and it compounds as you age.
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What I was curious about is how a young person can maybe reflect and how to recognize that early on so it doesn't become a problem at end of life.
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That's such an interesting point.
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I was reading the other day and it was said that child's attitude towards age is developed very young around about four somewhere like that and it depends a lot on how that child just perceives its grandparents or older people around them.
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So if those older people are sort of you know, miserable and whatever, that's the kind of attitude they take on, whereas if they are blessed with you know, dynamic grandparents who are interested in life and curious and so forth, that's how the child will react.
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So, carrying that forward, we all have a tremendous responsibility because we're enacting all the time how we live our age.
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And that's, I think, a very important point.
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And from my own point of view, I didn't know any of my grandparents didn't have any grandparents.
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I didn't know any of my grandparents didn't have any grandparents.
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And the oldest person that I can remember as a child was my Auntie Totti, and Auntie Totti, to me as a little girl, always looked as though she had too much powder on her face and her lipstick was always a bit squiff, and she used to have lots of jewelry.
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That's right, but she was a jolly soul.
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She was always laughing and full of jewelry, that's right, but she was a jolly soul.
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She was always laughing and full of beans, so I was lucky to have that as an image.
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Yeah, I guess that just shows how it doesn't have to be your grandparents, but it can be any person that you look up to and see in your life, right, I would want to ask how do you think ageism and age discrimination then link to the human rights of older people and the fight for a UN convention?
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Well, it's one of those very, very important things.
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There's so many different instruments around the world, but there's nothing really that ties it all together.
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And I think that is the most important thing, because we all have our rights and they are defended in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which doesn't specifically mention aging or age.
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And I think, if you reflect on that just for five seconds, it's because when it was created, 75 plus years ago, aging wasn't an issue.
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It just wasn't.
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We've had this incredible acceleration of life over a tremendously short period of time and as that acceleration continues, so the weight of the older person in society just grows.
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So it's just extremely important for those rights to be codified and to put into some form that can become legally binding.
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People are skeptical and they say, yes, but everything exists and it's all a question of implementation, and I tend to agree.
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And it's all a question of implementation, and I tend to agree.
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But it is so important to have them down in writing and become legally binding on all the nations.
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We all know that not every nation is going to apply them, but they can be held to account and people then have recourse and they can go through different areas and have their case put forward, and that is just so important it really is, so that equality can be assured for everybody.
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It's such a long way.
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You know, I work a lot with Africa and there's such a tremendous difference between Africa and the so-called developed world, on the positive and on the negative side.
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In the African communities there's still a lot of family-based care and family-based tradition, poverty, and that poverty is often a driver to excessive behavior, really excessive and awful behavior Sometimes, when older people are accused of witchcraft, for example, that can happen.
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I'm not please don't think I'm saying this happens throughout Africa and all the time, but it is a horrible thing which is driven by basic economic things.
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If people get accused of witchcraft, then their possessions get taken away from them and they get hounded out of the community, that kind of thing.
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So there's so many different aspects, but on the other hand, it's so important that all these countries go, and I must say here that I was really happy to notice that the African Union has its own code in this respect, and it's only recently that Nigeria became the one country that tipped that process into law, because up until then there were 15 different countries in Africa that ratified the protocol, and then Nigeria became just recently a couple of months ago the 16th, and that was the minimum amount of number of countries that were required to activate their own protocol or the rights of older people.
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So that's super.
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As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's a step ahead and should be followed.
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I think one of the main aspects is to have the convention, which would lay down all the different rules and regulations, and that countries would then have to ratify that and then imply it, and if they don't apply it, it's monitored and you can report on what they're not doing.
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So that's why I think it's just so important to go ahead and drive and to get this off the ground now.
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It's been talked about for so long.
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It really is high time that it comes into being.
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And do you mind sharing some things that you and others have done to eliminate ageism, age discrimination and to promote the human rights of older people?
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We work a lot with Age Platform in Europe and attend different meetings and participate in different work groups on all these questions about dignified aging, long-term care, age-friendly cities.
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So that is quite a big, important part of the work that we do.
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And then in Africa we work with countries.
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We've got a network in Southern Africa which consists of members in South Africa, in Botswana, in Zimbabwe, in Zambia, in Lesotho, and that is such interesting work and they're all working towards that.
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And the interesting thing is that in most of the constitutions of these countries they have excellent frameworks, excellent policies.
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There just sometimes is a big issue with the actual implementation of the policies, but they're way ahead of many countries in terms of what the policies actually say.
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So our biggest thing is to try to raise awareness and to talk about ageism, and especially to talk about ageism in terms of self-inflicted ageism.
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I'm a very, very, very, very strong advocate for people waking up to their own strength and their own agency, because there are millions and millions and millions of older people in the world.
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So if they were all to stand up for themselves, there would be far less ageism, because it would simply be taken for granted.
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And I always like to relate this story because people say that there's a lot of difference and it's difficult to do something.
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But if you're interested in a certain subject and let's take a subject like climate change or the SDGs of the United Nations and you become interested in that and, as an older person, you join an organization that is not an older person's organization, but an organization that is involved with one of these objectives, one of these massive problems that are facing our world, and you start working within that organization.
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Age just disappears, it simply doesn't matter, because you are then contributing to a common goal shared with the other people there.
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And whether you're 60, 70, 80, or whether you're 18 or 24, if there's a job to be done and you can do it and you can contribute.
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That is the best way of working around these issues.
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And the other thing that I think is so important is that we look at ourselves and we check our own language and we check our own attitudes.
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So often you hear people talking about oh, I'm having a senior moment.
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But, as Ashton Applewhite so often says I think I just love the way she says it she said when I was at university and I mislaid my keys, I didn't say, oh, I'm having a junior moment.
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Everybody throughout their life does these things, but we mustn't take on what society is busy projecting to us.
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On the contrary, we need to reflect that we're curious, that we're wanting to live, that we're wanting to contribute and that we are doing those things.
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And I think that is the most important work that we do working with people around the world on just being, but being active and being involved and that radiates out.
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You become a role model that other people can watch.
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For example, this is one that I really love One of our Pass it On Network members, whom we call pioneers, because Pass it On Network P-I-O-N it's not a very attractive acronym.
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We prefer to call ourselves pioneers Okay, pioneers.
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And this is a woman called Sheena Edwards and she lives in Perth in Australia, and when she retired she was given a tablet and she didn't know how to work it, although she had been in computers, the big computers.
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So she went about learning how to work her iPad and that was now 12 years ago, and since then she's created and grown a whole organization, and the nice thing about that is it's seniors helping other seniors.
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So as soon as she gets new people in, they're so pleased that they're learning how to manipulate the digital world, and then they can show somebody else who's just at a beginner stage, and she started endless numbers of little clubs like that, where it's a win-win all around.
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The people are very proud of themselves, the people who become teachers are really engaged, and this is what I mean by being active and also generative and creative in this stage of our lives.
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Not sitting there, ken Deitchfield.
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He always talks about literally millions of people old people standing in the wings waiting to be invited onto the stage.
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But that's not going to happen.
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We have to create our own stage and get on with it.
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And you know, it just seems to me so clear it seems like it's quite a big mountain to climb.
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What challenges have you faced trying to champion for that?
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I think the biggest challenge is just getting around society's kind of obstinacy in not recognizing what's going on, Because the world is changing and it's changing rapidly and the number of older people is just growing and growing and growing, and that requires radical changes in absolutely everything.
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I think that the work that the Stanford University is doing is absolutely outstanding.
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They're trying to plan for the hundred-year life which affects everybody.
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I mean, just think of it, Just think of your teeth.
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If you're going to live for a hundred years, you better take care of your teeth.
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Think of your teeth If you're going to live for 100 years, you better take care of your teeth.
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And then there's the whole question of lifelong learning.
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The standard pattern up until now has been that you go to school and then you go to university and you get a career and then you move on.
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But things are changing so rapidly and so quickly that you have to keep on re-educating yourself or getting new information, because otherwise you'll be outdated.
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So Stanford University is working on the whole idea of periods of training, periods of working periods of training, periods of relaxation, et cetera a whole new way of looking at life.
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And this is exciting and I can't see why people around the world don't find the excitement in that and the curiosity and see the possibilities for innovating, because it seriously is changing so much.
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There's not these three blocks of life.
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I really like the message.
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You're not done living just because you reach 65.
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And you mentioned kind of older people having unique experiences and possibly even first chances later in life.
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Were there any experiences like that that you had that you wouldn't have otherwise expected when you were young?
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Me?
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Sure, I seriously think that I've had the most wonderful last 15 to 20 years through the creation of the Parsadon Network.
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I'm the co-founder of that with a wonderful person called Dr Jan Hively, and how we got going I always like to tell the story was that I went off to the first ever Positive Aging Conference in Florida in 2007.
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And that's where I met Jan Hively, and she was running a workshop that was called Meaningful Work, paid or Unpaid, through the Last Breath, and I was just so fascinated by this because this goes back to what I said right at the beginning, that every age has its development tasks and I thought this was wonderful.
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So I stood in the long queue of people who wanted to speak to her at the end and I handed her my little card.
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At the stage, I was running an occupational health organization in France, in the Paris area, and I said to her if ever you come to Paris, come and come and talk to our medical doctors in the occupational field, because at that stage, which was 2008, the whole question of age in the workplace wasn't an issue, which it has now become more and more so.
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A year later, she contacted me and said I'm going to be coming to Paris.
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So she came and I introduced her to Dr Francoise Fauret, who was Mrs Gerontology in France at that time, and we organized a huge conference with the medical doctors of the whole Paris region and it was the first time that they had actually studied this whole issue of age in the workplace.
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And from then on we created the Pass it On Network.
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And Pass it On is to pass on whatever experience you have accumulated, basically to help yourself first and foremost.
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Secondly, to help your family and to help your community and remain engaged.
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And it was built on an organization that I created in Europe called Too Young to Retire, which was started in the United States by a super couple called Howard and Marika Stone and they were way ahead of the trend.
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But I mean the trend has happened so quickly because of the baby boomers coming up.
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They started in the year 2000 and they were ahead of the trend, together with Mark Friedman who had his civic ventures organization.
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So these things are just people who've been alive to what is happening and adjusted the life.
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And the whole thing about too young to retire was to retire, that horrible word of retirement.
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It's like just switch off.
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It's awful, it's retreat, it's withdrawal, it's just not on.
00:26:14.592 --> 00:26:20.597
So you don't have to carry on working per se, but you don't retire from life.
00:26:20.597 --> 00:26:27.278
You keep on living, and in an appropriate way to your circumstances, health and everything.
00:26:27.278 --> 00:26:37.605
The whole question of age in the workplace wasn't an issue, which it has now become more and more so.
00:26:37.886 --> 00:26:42.217
A year later she contacted me and said I'm going to be coming to Paris.
00:26:43.346 --> 00:27:06.058
So she came and I introduced her to Dr Françoise Fauré, who was Mrs Gerontology in France at that time, and we organized a huge conference with the medical doctors of the whole Paris region and it was the first time that they had actually studied this whole issue of age in the workplace.
00:27:06.605 --> 00:27:20.776
And from then on we created the Pass it On Network, and Pass it On is to pass on whatever experience you have accumulated, basically to help yourself first and foremost.
00:27:21.105 --> 00:27:25.825
Secondly to help your family and to help your community and remain engaged.
00:27:25.825 --> 00:27:46.336
And it was built on an organization that I created in Europe called Too Young to Retire, which was started in the United States by a super couple called Howard and Marika Stone, and they were way ahead of the trend, but I mean the trend has happened so quickly because of the baby boomers coming up.
00:27:46.336 --> 00:27:48.810
They started in the year 2000,.
00:27:48.810 --> 00:27:55.356
And they were ahead of the trend, together with Mark Friedman who had his Civic Ventures organization.
00:27:55.356 --> 00:28:03.012
So these things are just people who've been alive to what is happening and adjusted their life.
00:28:03.012 --> 00:28:11.890
And the whole thing about too young to retire was to retire that horrible word of retirement, it's like just switch off.
00:28:11.890 --> 00:28:17.711
It's awful, it's retreat, it's withdrawal, it's just not on.
00:28:17.711 --> 00:28:23.669
So you don't have to carry on working per se, but you don't retire from life.
00:28:23.669 --> 00:28:30.594
You keep on living and in an appropriate way to your circumstances, health and everything else.
00:28:31.897 --> 00:28:35.689
I want to touch a bit more on retirement and ageism in the workplace.
00:28:35.689 --> 00:28:47.145
Do you have any thoughts on what organizations can do to become more aware of their role in ageism, and if there's anything that they can potentially do to eliminate it?
00:28:48.387 --> 00:29:08.347
Well, I think that necessity is forcing people and forcing companies to realize what's going on, and I can just quote in Germany, for example, they're bringing back retired people because they don't have sufficient skilled people to fulfill the jobs, and this kind of thing is happening more and more.
00:29:08.347 --> 00:29:11.856
But I think that there's so much work being done in this field.
00:29:11.856 --> 00:29:22.938
You know, in the States we've got Janine van den Berg who's been really pushing this whole issue for such a long time of equity in the workplace and the right place for older people.
00:29:22.938 --> 00:30:00.578
We've got from our Parsital network, linda Smith in South Africa that runs an organization called 50 Plus Skills and she's been working for years now with the big companies to show them the importance of, number one, preparing people who are getting towards the retirement age, not to stop working or anything like that, but maybe to have some kind of flexibility in the changing roles and also to increase the number of people still at work in the 60 to 70 age group.
00:30:00.578 --> 00:30:07.595
That's what is really required and you can see many, many different examples today.
00:30:07.595 --> 00:30:23.951
For example, in some big management companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers Group, they have, I think, an age limit for their partners and then their partners are expected to go off and create something or to work with other people, so that's very good.
00:30:24.585 --> 00:30:27.295
In France, I know there are two things.
00:30:27.295 --> 00:30:38.093
There's the OECD that's been working very, very hard with big companies to get them to understand the importance of maintaining older workers.
00:30:38.093 --> 00:30:54.461
And then there's another recently formed organization I forget the name for the moment, but they are now it's a group of it's like a club of big companies.
00:30:54.461 --> 00:31:06.221
The human resource people are all working together and working on this whole issue of maintaining people in the workplace and continuing education, which is so important.
00:31:06.221 --> 00:31:11.154
So I think there's very much to be said about that.
00:31:11.174 --> 00:31:13.320
So I think there's very much to be said about that.
00:31:13.320 --> 00:31:25.689
And there's a great deal of research that has been done on the effectiveness of age, diverse work teams.
00:31:25.689 --> 00:31:36.519
In startups, for example, you get a far better success rate when you have a mixed team the older and the younger than when you have an all-young team or an all-older team.
00:31:36.519 --> 00:31:39.801
And I think, if you think about it, it's just totally logical.
00:31:39.801 --> 00:31:57.079
You know, the older people have the experience and the younger people have the tech and the drive and the curiosity and all the rest of it, and the mix is just it stands more chances of winning.
00:31:57.079 --> 00:32:33.358
So I think that we're actually living at the moment, a major change that is going on because of the lack of workers, of workers, and it's going to increase, because we're already seeing the articles about the start of the depopulation of the world sorry, I just wanted to add, like how you said, it was totally logical to have, uh teams in the workplace that are mixed like depending on age.
00:32:33.839 --> 00:32:43.195
I think yeah, just like how you would want to bring in perspectives from people of different backgrounds or races, different people of different genders.
00:32:43.195 --> 00:32:45.241
It's kind of the same idea, right.
00:32:45.241 --> 00:32:51.066
So yeah, absolutely makes total sense yeah, no, and I've been.
00:32:51.326 --> 00:32:58.364
You know, obviously, one reads a lot of these things and what we need, as for aging, is what happened with, uh, with women.
00:32:58.364 --> 00:33:07.993
You know how quickly has that changed women in the workplace, and more and more equality, and more and more equal pay for equal work, etc.
00:33:07.993 --> 00:33:08.493
Etc.
00:33:08.493 --> 00:33:20.922
And that's what we need to happen with aging, and that women's rights have been increased incredibly over a short period of time.
00:33:20.922 --> 00:33:30.099
So we need to do the same thing for ages, but it's not to fight for an age, it's not that at all, in my feeling.
00:33:30.099 --> 00:33:40.823
It's to fight for an understanding of the life course, and that it's rich and that everything you know it's like a book.
00:33:40.823 --> 00:33:43.356
You know a fabulous book that you've read.
00:33:43.356 --> 00:33:45.917
I don't want to go back and read Chapter 1.
00:33:45.917 --> 00:33:59.963
You know, you've read it, you've enjoyed it, you've assimilated it and life is a progression and it just gets deeper and better.
00:33:59.963 --> 00:34:04.900
So, anyway, that's the way I feel.
00:34:06.411 --> 00:34:12.384
Moira, if you're comfortable, do you mind sharing any personal experiences that you've had with ageism?
00:34:13.811 --> 00:34:21.704
Well, I think one that really gave me a shock was I'm busy sitting working happily at my computer and the doorbell rings.
00:34:21.704 --> 00:34:33.237
So I go there and there's this fellow and he's got a whole stack of papers and an iPad on top of it and he says that he's from the local utility company.
00:34:33.237 --> 00:34:36.235
I said yes and he said okay.
00:34:36.235 --> 00:34:44.159
So first of all I just have to ask you a few questions, okay, so name and address and telephone number, and then age.
00:34:44.159 --> 00:34:45.864
So I say my age.
00:34:45.864 --> 00:34:47.992
I think I must have been 72 at the time.
00:34:47.992 --> 00:34:48.532
So I say my age.
00:34:48.532 --> 00:34:51.297
I think I must have been 72 at the time.
00:34:51.297 --> 00:34:56.804
So he closes his iPad and he says you're too old, I can't talk to you, literally like that.
00:34:56.804 --> 00:35:00.931
So what do you mean?
00:35:00.931 --> 00:35:01.853
I'm too old and you can't talk to me.
00:35:01.853 --> 00:35:04.742
He said haven't you got somebody under 70 in your household that I can talk to?
00:35:06.152 --> 00:35:07.858
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
00:35:16.331 --> 00:35:17.492
Anyway, that was it.
00:35:17.492 --> 00:35:21.976
He couldn't talk to me because I didn't fit to his standard.
00:35:21.976 --> 00:35:27.001
And then there was another case that was also quite interesting.
00:35:27.001 --> 00:35:38.302
I've been going to the same gynecologist for forever, and the last time I went to her she didn't do a pap smear.
00:35:38.302 --> 00:35:42.659
I said, oh, aren't you going to do a pap smear?
00:35:42.659 --> 00:35:43.460
And she said no.
00:35:43.460 --> 00:35:44.762
And I said why?
00:35:44.762 --> 00:35:51.384
And she said well, it's not covered by the Social Security after a certain age.
00:35:51.384 --> 00:35:53.257
I said, oh, that's very strange.
00:35:53.257 --> 00:36:12.496
She said yes, because the pap smear is designed basically to detect sexually transmissible diseases, so the Social Security obviously expects you not to have any sexual activity after a certain age, because then you can't catch the disease.
00:36:12.496 --> 00:36:18.039
That was quite an interesting thing.
00:36:18.039 --> 00:36:18.981
That happened as well.
00:36:19.829 --> 00:36:24.101
So you have these odd things that happen and make you realize.
00:36:24.101 --> 00:36:28.898
Then, there are far more serious things.
00:36:28.898 --> 00:36:49.706
That that happen, though, is that, for example, if you want to get a house loan or you want to rent an apartment, and you suddenly find that the people renting the apartment now want your last three bulletins paychecks.
00:36:49.706 --> 00:37:03.721
So if you retired and your retirement is obviously a fraction of what your earning capacity was you really have difficulty getting a renting an apartment.
00:37:03.721 --> 00:37:07.338
You know those kind of things which are very serious.
00:37:07.338 --> 00:37:11.315
And insurance also.
00:37:11.315 --> 00:37:14.536
Sometimes in insurance companies it's limited in terms of age.
00:37:14.536 --> 00:37:19.538
If you travel, the travel insurance is much more expensive.
00:37:19.538 --> 00:37:22.463
The older you get, you know, et cetera.
00:37:26.251 --> 00:37:45.342
I guess through this podcast you're speaking to older people and younger people and Kira and I are in our 20s and other advocates and allies who are also of all ages, so what would you say to them about the work to bring about a convention and how they can be involved in the process?
00:37:46.170 --> 00:37:48.012
Well, I think it's just so interesting.
00:37:48.012 --> 00:38:02.025
You know, more and more and more and more people are talking about the necessity of intergenerational activities, and I'm obviously all in favor of intergenerational activities, but not if they're artificial.
00:38:02.025 --> 00:38:33.360
Taking small children to go and see older people in an old age home, it's fine, but it's like it's a one-off Christmas time or maybe Easter time or on some occasion, and it would be so much nicer if we could just try to work our societies to being more integrated and less chopped up like a sausage, so I don't know, just to try to get back to a society where there's interaction across the whole scope.
00:38:33.360 --> 00:38:38.617
You know I love to tell this story and it has to do with lifelong learning.
00:38:38.858 --> 00:38:54.358
In Africa One of our pioneers was a wonderful man called Tom Holloway and Tom was a computer engineer with IBM and he did his whole career with IBM and he died when he was 92.
00:38:54.358 --> 00:38:58.762
So you know that whole expanse and growth of technology.
00:38:58.762 --> 00:39:14.159
But however, when Tom retired he went to visit a friend of his in India and he was absolutely appalled at the way the untouchables were treated in India and he decided that he would like to do something with them.
00:39:14.159 --> 00:39:28.358
So he started to use his computer knowledge and he bought some computers and he started teaching computers and this ended up in Tom spending 16 years in India.
00:39:28.358 --> 00:39:38.090
He spent eight months a year in India and then four months back in the UK teaching and training people and when he came back to the UK it was because of his health.
00:39:38.090 --> 00:39:49.378
And he then got involved with our groups in South Africa and he helped us to set up a WhatsApp group for the University of the Third Age in Africa.
00:39:49.378 --> 00:40:03.320
So we've got now the University of the Third Age WhatsApp group in Zimbabwe and in Botswana and we're planning to move further up because the internet is very expensive in Africa.
00:40:04.061 --> 00:40:04.521
Number one.
00:40:04.521 --> 00:40:11.971
Number two the difficulties of having a consistent electrical supply is a big problem in Africa.
00:40:11.971 --> 00:40:29.925
So the way they do it now is, for example, it's the older group and they would have, for example, somebody talk to them about dementia and then the person would record six to eight clips of 90 seconds each.
00:40:29.925 --> 00:40:37.916
Just you know one would be what is dementia, how do you recognize it, and then what do you do about it and who can help you, et cetera.
00:40:37.916 --> 00:41:11.907
And these were just short little clips and then that's on for a month and then everybody listens to the clips, and then there's a big exchange between them you know this, and I've got this, and I've got a granny that puts this in my mother, blah, blah, and so it goes, and that, I think, is just a wonderful, wonderful use of technology in a situation where it would not be possible otherwise yeah, I feel like this whole conversation has really given me a lot to think about and opened my mind to.
00:41:11.927 --> 00:41:22.322
You know, even though the world is changing and there is ageism that goes along with that, and there's also more opportunities then to change the way that we live for the better.
00:41:25.471 --> 00:41:41.344
Yeah, I think we all just have to become more and more aware of how wonderful we are as human beings and that we all every single one of us, has incredible potential for just becoming the best that we can.
00:41:43.692 --> 00:41:44.916
Thank you so much for sharing that.
00:41:44.916 --> 00:41:50.512
We really appreciate it and appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be here with us.
00:41:50.512 --> 00:41:55.282
Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you would like to maybe bring up?
00:41:56.552 --> 00:42:05.885
you know, I think just that, the, just that the age, age is just a wonderful gift.
00:42:05.885 --> 00:42:10.056
You know, seriously, it's an absolutely wonderful gift.
00:42:10.056 --> 00:42:20.731
And if you get 60, 70, 80, and now people are living, as we said, more and more and longer and longer, it's an incredible gift.
00:42:20.731 --> 00:42:30.065
And when I was probably your age, somewhere around there, somebody said this to me and I have never, ever forgotten it.
00:42:30.065 --> 00:42:41.599
And they said to me that fate is the relentless result of your day-to-day activities, and I think that aging is very much like that.
00:42:41.599 --> 00:42:45.179
You know, you don't become wise because you're old.
00:42:45.179 --> 00:42:47.336
There's stupid old people as well.
00:42:47.336 --> 00:42:57.561
I mean, you don't just graduate to wisdom, but it's your life's experience that you accumulate.
00:42:57.561 --> 00:43:07.137
If, going ahead, we all just realize that life is an incredible gift and we don't know for how long we've got it.
00:43:07.137 --> 00:43:10.692
Today is the only day and it'll never come again.
00:43:10.692 --> 00:43:20.396
And that's what we need to do Just make every day the best day, and then you'll age like an angel.
00:43:21.820 --> 00:43:24.262
Well, you've made my day today the best day.
00:43:24.262 --> 00:43:25.304
Thank you so much.
00:43:26.710 --> 00:43:30.981
And I can feel it now, as I'm 78, going into my 80s.
00:43:30.981 --> 00:43:33.594
You just have a different.
00:43:33.594 --> 00:43:37.302
You know, your drive is different.
00:43:37.302 --> 00:43:40.818
What you're aiming at is different.
00:43:40.818 --> 00:43:46.436
It's evolved and, as I said about the book, I don't want to go back.
00:43:46.436 --> 00:43:51.038
I'm curious, I want to go forward, see what it's all about.
00:43:51.038 --> 00:43:53.719
It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:55.369
Thank you, moira.
00:43:55.369 --> 00:43:57.275
Yeah, I've enjoyed talking with you too.
00:43:57.275 --> 00:43:59.621
Okie dokes.
00:44:00.409 --> 00:44:02.014
Have a good rest of your day, Moira.
00:44:02.976 --> 00:44:04.541
Okay, lovely, thank you.
00:44:04.541 --> 00:44:05.342
Have a good weekend.
00:44:05.342 --> 00:44:06.994
Yeah you too, bye, bye.
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:00.441
Welcome.
00:00:00.441 --> 00:00:04.652
This is Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host for the Wisdom at Work podcast.
00:00:04.652 --> 00:00:07.530
Elder Women, older Women and Grandmothers on the Move.
00:00:07.530 --> 00:00:11.224
What follows is a special and exciting 10-part series.
00:00:11.846 --> 00:00:17.243
Have you ever thought about how human rights plays an essential and meaningful role in our older age?
00:00:17.603 --> 00:00:18.646
Well, you're in the right place.
00:00:18.928 --> 00:00:27.327
You're listening to Age with Rights and Dignity 10 interviews in which we will hear from older and younger advocates from different corners of the world.
00:00:27.327 --> 00:00:43.389
These committed champions will share with us why they care about the rights of older persons and what they are doing to help bring a new United Nations Convention on the Rights of Older Persons into being, for you and for me, no matter how old we are.
00:00:43.389 --> 00:00:46.268
Now Join the movement and raise your voice.
00:00:46.268 --> 00:01:05.572
Go to the Age Noble Human Rights Day 2024 blog to find out more that is A-G-E-K-N-O-W-B-L-Ecom and sign the global petition for the UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons.
00:01:05.572 --> 00:01:20.287
I'm also excited to introduce you to two wonderful guest interviewers, younger women who are committed to these issues and will be joining me in this series to interview some of our esteemed guests Faith Young and Kira Goenis.
00:01:20.287 --> 00:01:35.492
Thank you for joining us, enjoy this special initiative, and my thanks to Margaret Young, the founder of Age Noble for bringing this opportunity to us to hear from these important guests who promote the human rights and the dignity of older persons the world over.
00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:42.012
Hi, my name is Faith and I'm a guest interviewer on today's Wisdom at Work podcast.
00:01:42.012 --> 00:01:56.507
I am studying at university and I'm also currently volunteering at the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older Persons, and I believe in protecting the rights of older persons and I'm looking forward to interviewing our guest today.
00:01:57.549 --> 00:02:04.825
Hello, my name is Kira and I'm a guest interviewer on today's Wisdom at Work podcast.
00:02:04.825 --> 00:02:12.211
I'm currently a university student studying psychology, with plans to specialize in gerontology.
00:02:12.211 --> 00:02:17.236
I care deeply about supporting the mental health and rights of older adults.
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So I'm really looking forward to speaking with our guest today.
00:02:25.438 --> 00:02:29.322
Today, we are joined by Moira Allen.
00:02:29.322 --> 00:02:31.387
Moira is based in Paris and she is living a fulfilled life as a lifelong learner.
00:02:31.387 --> 00:02:41.324
Originally from South Africa, she built her career in journalism, public relations, life coaching, training and managing an occupational health organization in France.
00:02:41.324 --> 00:03:03.348
She founded the Too Young to Retire Network in Europe and went on to co-found, with Jan Heigli PhD, the Pass it On Network, a global grassroots, strength-based network of positive aging pioneers advocating for the rights of older people, the adaptation of society to the new opportunities and challenges of longevity, and defying ageism through action.
00:03:03.348 --> 00:03:14.324
She is the international coordinator of the network that has spread to 65 countries on the five continents, with regional networks, including a very vital one in Southern Africa.
00:03:15.828 --> 00:03:25.274
Moira serves on several boards Old Up, an avant-garde French association whose aim it is to give meaning and utility to our longer lives.
00:03:25.274 --> 00:03:35.929
Eureg, a non-profit NGO with 150 member organizations in 27 European countries, and the International Longevity Center, france.
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She leads Old Ups Europe and the World Global Group, intent on learning from how other countries are coping with our global demographic phenomenon.
00:03:44.532 --> 00:03:49.331
She serves on Age Platform, europe's task force on the rights of older people.
00:03:49.331 --> 00:04:00.612
She is on the mission committee of CLEREN, a major European player in the care industry that has adopted the status of a purpose-driven company, combining their economic and social roles.
00:04:00.612 --> 00:04:15.002
She's also a director of the Wilton's Foundation in South Africa, dedicated to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and to lifelong learning opportunities for all in rural environments.
00:04:15.002 --> 00:04:18.449
Moira, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:04:18.449 --> 00:04:23.065
We're thrilled to have you here and truly appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.
00:04:23.065 --> 00:04:26.333
Let's start by diving into your journey.
00:04:26.333 --> 00:04:35.809
Do you mind sharing a bit about yourself and what inspired you to step into the world of anti-ageism and anti-discrimination advocacy?
00:04:36.199 --> 00:04:48.591
Well, I guess the simple answer is that I'm growing old, like everybody around the world, every single day, and I've always been fascinated by the life course approach.
00:04:48.591 --> 00:05:08.774
I studied psychology and that was the one aspect that interested me and I kind of had a wonderful anticipation of what I would be like when I got into that stage where they say you stop and you reflect and you go back on your life and you appreciate it, and so forth and so on.
00:05:08.774 --> 00:05:22.591
And I think that's why I get so angry when I see that whole stage of life, which is the last half of life Firstly, being lumped from 60 to 100 as one big group.
00:05:22.591 --> 00:05:27.630
You know, it's almost as if you put babies to 40 years in the same group.
00:05:27.630 --> 00:05:30.185
Do me a favor, but that's what happens.
00:05:30.185 --> 00:05:36.449
That really makes me angry because there's such interesting variations in age.
00:05:36.449 --> 00:05:39.295
I think that was basically the first thing.
00:05:39.656 --> 00:05:51.730
Then I listened to Dr Bill Thomas, who's a very well-known geriatrician in the United States, and he just had this wonderful way, to my mind, of explaining it.
00:05:51.730 --> 00:06:05.154
He said that from the time you're born and you come out of your mother's womb and you get that first clap on the back and you take your breath and you start breathing and you start living.
00:06:05.154 --> 00:06:13.213
Everyone has two imperatives and those imperatives are growth and development.
00:06:13.213 --> 00:06:25.826
And those imperatives stay with you until your very last breath and they move along with you, obviously as you develop and as you grow and you move from stage to stage.
00:06:25.826 --> 00:06:33.891
And life is a progression and that's what the what ageism doesn't understand, because it's.
00:06:34.392 --> 00:06:35.494
It's just so amazing.
00:06:35.494 --> 00:06:41.326
You know, every single person, without exception, grows older day by day.
00:06:41.326 --> 00:06:43.310
You know's no mystery.
00:06:43.310 --> 00:06:44.310
That's what's happening.
00:06:44.310 --> 00:06:52.709
And then, just as a little smirk, when you think of how much time it takes to change any policies.
00:06:52.709 --> 00:07:06.492
All the work that we're doing is for you guys, for the younger people, because by the time you get through, I hope and pray that we will have a convention at the United Nations on these issues.
00:07:06.492 --> 00:07:08.482
That's so wonderful.
00:07:08.701 --> 00:07:13.733
Yes, do you mind defining what ageism is and what that may look like?
00:07:15.259 --> 00:07:25.771
Well, I think ageism, simply defined, is a social construct against age which puts the emphasis onto age.
00:07:25.771 --> 00:07:38.562
So you are classified as age and that means that you're too old or too young to do something, and it's a completely socially constructed concept.
00:07:38.562 --> 00:07:57.153
Ageism, which is different from age discrimination, which is actually the acts that discriminate against people, it's one of the last isms that's acceptable, socially acceptable.
00:07:57.153 --> 00:08:14.266
But discrimination, for example, says that you can no longer drive a motor car after such and such an age, or you can't have a house loan after such and such an age, or you can't have a house loan after such and such an age, or your employer stops thinking of you as a valid person for ongoing learning when you get to 45 or 50.
00:08:14.266 --> 00:08:23.069
That's real discrimination, Whereas ageism itself tends more to be on the emotional side, the perceptive side.
00:08:23.069 --> 00:08:27.281
You know how people perceive aging through just stereotypes.
00:08:27.843 --> 00:08:43.205
Would you say that ageism, I guess, leads to age discrimination, or ageism is kind of the root of a lot of this other lack of the right to self-autonomy and dignity and being able to make your own decisions as an older person.
00:08:44.408 --> 00:08:47.614
I think that they kind of go hand in hand really.
00:08:47.614 --> 00:08:56.850
And it's self-defeating to have ageist attitudes which lead to discrimination and discrimination to the ageist attitudes.
00:08:56.850 --> 00:09:00.549
You know, it's just, it's against the human progression of life.
00:09:00.549 --> 00:09:08.186
We're all going to be old and we're all going to go through different stages of life et cetera.
00:09:08.245 --> 00:09:15.361
What I think about a lot is that ageism manifests when you're younger and it compounds as you age.
00:09:15.361 --> 00:09:28.533
What I was curious about is how a young person can maybe reflect and how to recognize that early on so it doesn't become a problem at end of life.
00:09:29.919 --> 00:09:31.243
That's such an interesting point.
00:09:31.243 --> 00:09:47.413
I was reading the other day and it was said that child's attitude towards age is developed very young around about four somewhere like that and it depends a lot on how that child just perceives its grandparents or older people around them.
00:09:47.413 --> 00:10:04.875
So if those older people are sort of you know, miserable and whatever, that's the kind of attitude they take on, whereas if they are blessed with you know, dynamic grandparents who are interested in life and curious and so forth, that's how the child will react.
00:10:04.875 --> 00:10:15.028
So, carrying that forward, we all have a tremendous responsibility because we're enacting all the time how we live our age.
00:10:15.028 --> 00:10:18.086
And that's, I think, a very important point.
00:10:18.620 --> 00:10:24.187
And from my own point of view, I didn't know any of my grandparents didn't have any grandparents.
00:10:24.187 --> 00:10:25.610
I didn't know any of my grandparents didn't have any grandparents.
00:10:25.610 --> 00:10:41.091
And the oldest person that I can remember as a child was my Auntie Totti, and Auntie Totti, to me as a little girl, always looked as though she had too much powder on her face and her lipstick was always a bit squiff, and she used to have lots of jewelry.
00:10:41.091 --> 00:10:43.245
That's right, but she was a jolly soul.
00:10:43.245 --> 00:10:45.221
She was always laughing and full of jewelry, that's right, but she was a jolly soul.
00:10:45.221 --> 00:10:50.125
She was always laughing and full of beans, so I was lucky to have that as an image.
00:10:50.908 --> 00:11:10.350
Yeah, I guess that just shows how it doesn't have to be your grandparents, but it can be any person that you look up to and see in your life, right, I would want to ask how do you think ageism and age discrimination then link to the human rights of older people and the fight for a UN convention?
00:11:11.361 --> 00:11:13.889
Well, it's one of those very, very important things.
00:11:13.889 --> 00:11:19.966
There's so many different instruments around the world, but there's nothing really that ties it all together.
00:11:19.966 --> 00:11:33.216
And I think that is the most important thing, because we all have our rights and they are defended in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which doesn't specifically mention aging or age.
00:11:33.216 --> 00:11:44.394
And I think, if you reflect on that just for five seconds, it's because when it was created, 75 plus years ago, aging wasn't an issue.
00:11:44.394 --> 00:11:45.556
It just wasn't.
00:11:45.556 --> 00:12:02.301
We've had this incredible acceleration of life over a tremendously short period of time and as that acceleration continues, so the weight of the older person in society just grows.
00:12:02.301 --> 00:12:15.653
So it's just extremely important for those rights to be codified and to put into some form that can become legally binding.
00:12:15.653 --> 00:12:23.885
People are skeptical and they say, yes, but everything exists and it's all a question of implementation, and I tend to agree.
00:12:23.885 --> 00:12:30.484
And it's all a question of implementation, and I tend to agree.
00:12:30.484 --> 00:12:33.139
But it is so important to have them down in writing and become legally binding on all the nations.
00:12:33.139 --> 00:12:55.191
We all know that not every nation is going to apply them, but they can be held to account and people then have recourse and they can go through different areas and have their case put forward, and that is just so important it really is, so that equality can be assured for everybody.
00:12:55.191 --> 00:12:57.807
It's such a long way.
00:12:58.600 --> 00:13:09.826
You know, I work a lot with Africa and there's such a tremendous difference between Africa and the so-called developed world, on the positive and on the negative side.
00:13:09.826 --> 00:13:34.432
In the African communities there's still a lot of family-based care and family-based tradition, poverty, and that poverty is often a driver to excessive behavior, really excessive and awful behavior Sometimes, when older people are accused of witchcraft, for example, that can happen.
00:13:34.432 --> 00:13:44.173
I'm not please don't think I'm saying this happens throughout Africa and all the time, but it is a horrible thing which is driven by basic economic things.
00:13:44.173 --> 00:13:52.830
If people get accused of witchcraft, then their possessions get taken away from them and they get hounded out of the community, that kind of thing.
00:13:52.830 --> 00:14:38.513
So there's so many different aspects, but on the other hand, it's so important that all these countries go, and I must say here that I was really happy to notice that the African Union has its own code in this respect, and it's only recently that Nigeria became the one country that tipped that process into law, because up until then there were 15 different countries in Africa that ratified the protocol, and then Nigeria became just recently a couple of months ago the 16th, and that was the minimum amount of number of countries that were required to activate their own protocol or the rights of older people.
00:14:38.513 --> 00:14:40.822
So that's super.
00:14:41.083 --> 00:14:46.173
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's a step ahead and should be followed.
00:14:46.173 --> 00:15:04.972
I think one of the main aspects is to have the convention, which would lay down all the different rules and regulations, and that countries would then have to ratify that and then imply it, and if they don't apply it, it's monitored and you can report on what they're not doing.
00:15:04.972 --> 00:15:12.049
So that's why I think it's just so important to go ahead and drive and to get this off the ground now.
00:15:12.049 --> 00:15:13.787
It's been talked about for so long.
00:15:13.787 --> 00:15:17.029
It really is high time that it comes into being.
00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:32.110
And do you mind sharing some things that you and others have done to eliminate ageism, age discrimination and to promote the human rights of older people?
00:15:33.041 --> 00:15:46.833
We work a lot with Age Platform in Europe and attend different meetings and participate in different work groups on all these questions about dignified aging, long-term care, age-friendly cities.
00:15:46.833 --> 00:15:50.750
So that is quite a big, important part of the work that we do.
00:15:50.750 --> 00:15:54.549
And then in Africa we work with countries.
00:15:54.549 --> 00:16:12.730
We've got a network in Southern Africa which consists of members in South Africa, in Botswana, in Zimbabwe, in Zambia, in Lesotho, and that is such interesting work and they're all working towards that.
00:16:12.730 --> 00:16:21.149
And the interesting thing is that in most of the constitutions of these countries they have excellent frameworks, excellent policies.
00:16:21.149 --> 00:16:32.352
There just sometimes is a big issue with the actual implementation of the policies, but they're way ahead of many countries in terms of what the policies actually say.
00:16:32.352 --> 00:16:46.115
So our biggest thing is to try to raise awareness and to talk about ageism, and especially to talk about ageism in terms of self-inflicted ageism.
00:16:48.061 --> 00:17:02.208
I'm a very, very, very, very strong advocate for people waking up to their own strength and their own agency, because there are millions and millions and millions of older people in the world.
00:17:02.208 --> 00:17:12.798
So if they were all to stand up for themselves, there would be far less ageism, because it would simply be taken for granted.
00:17:12.798 --> 00:17:20.953
And I always like to relate this story because people say that there's a lot of difference and it's difficult to do something.
00:17:20.953 --> 00:17:48.436
But if you're interested in a certain subject and let's take a subject like climate change or the SDGs of the United Nations and you become interested in that and, as an older person, you join an organization that is not an older person's organization, but an organization that is involved with one of these objectives, one of these massive problems that are facing our world, and you start working within that organization.
00:17:48.436 --> 00:17:58.836
Age just disappears, it simply doesn't matter, because you are then contributing to a common goal shared with the other people there.
00:17:58.836 --> 00:18:08.076
And whether you're 60, 70, 80, or whether you're 18 or 24, if there's a job to be done and you can do it and you can contribute.
00:18:08.076 --> 00:18:13.817
That is the best way of working around these issues.
00:18:14.684 --> 00:18:24.115
And the other thing that I think is so important is that we look at ourselves and we check our own language and we check our own attitudes.
00:18:24.115 --> 00:18:28.236
So often you hear people talking about oh, I'm having a senior moment.
00:18:28.236 --> 00:18:40.259
But, as Ashton Applewhite so often says I think I just love the way she says it she said when I was at university and I mislaid my keys, I didn't say, oh, I'm having a junior moment.
00:18:40.259 --> 00:18:50.471
Everybody throughout their life does these things, but we mustn't take on what society is busy projecting to us.
00:18:50.471 --> 00:19:00.011
On the contrary, we need to reflect that we're curious, that we're wanting to live, that we're wanting to contribute and that we are doing those things.
00:19:00.011 --> 00:19:11.530
And I think that is the most important work that we do working with people around the world on just being, but being active and being involved and that radiates out.
00:19:11.530 --> 00:19:14.934
You become a role model that other people can watch.
00:19:15.505 --> 00:19:29.419
For example, this is one that I really love One of our Pass it On Network members, whom we call pioneers, because Pass it On Network P-I-O-N it's not a very attractive acronym.
00:19:29.419 --> 00:19:36.798
We prefer to call ourselves pioneers Okay, pioneers.
00:19:36.798 --> 00:19:52.276
And this is a woman called Sheena Edwards and she lives in Perth in Australia, and when she retired she was given a tablet and she didn't know how to work it, although she had been in computers, the big computers.
00:19:52.276 --> 00:20:09.778
So she went about learning how to work her iPad and that was now 12 years ago, and since then she's created and grown a whole organization, and the nice thing about that is it's seniors helping other seniors.
00:20:09.778 --> 00:20:30.377
So as soon as she gets new people in, they're so pleased that they're learning how to manipulate the digital world, and then they can show somebody else who's just at a beginner stage, and she started endless numbers of little clubs like that, where it's a win-win all around.
00:20:31.125 --> 00:20:43.455
The people are very proud of themselves, the people who become teachers are really engaged, and this is what I mean by being active and also generative and creative in this stage of our lives.
00:20:43.455 --> 00:20:46.204
Not sitting there, ken Deitchfield.
00:20:46.204 --> 00:20:54.813
He always talks about literally millions of people old people standing in the wings waiting to be invited onto the stage.
00:20:54.813 --> 00:20:57.211
But that's not going to happen.
00:20:57.211 --> 00:21:02.116
We have to create our own stage and get on with it.
00:21:02.116 --> 00:21:08.875
And you know, it just seems to me so clear it seems like it's quite a big mountain to climb.
00:21:09.345 --> 00:21:12.634
What challenges have you faced trying to champion for that?
00:21:13.105 --> 00:21:32.837
I think the biggest challenge is just getting around society's kind of obstinacy in not recognizing what's going on, Because the world is changing and it's changing rapidly and the number of older people is just growing and growing and growing, and that requires radical changes in absolutely everything.
00:21:32.837 --> 00:21:39.434
I think that the work that the Stanford University is doing is absolutely outstanding.
00:21:39.434 --> 00:21:45.333
They're trying to plan for the hundred-year life which affects everybody.
00:21:45.333 --> 00:21:47.518
I mean, just think of it, Just think of your teeth.
00:21:47.518 --> 00:21:50.921
If you're going to live for a hundred years, you better take care of your teeth.
00:21:50.921 --> 00:21:57.678
Think of your teeth If you're going to live for 100 years, you better take care of your teeth.
00:21:57.698 --> 00:21:59.565
And then there's the whole question of lifelong learning.
00:21:59.565 --> 00:22:03.836
The standard pattern up until now has been that you go to school and then you go to university and you get a career and then you move on.
00:22:03.836 --> 00:22:15.999
But things are changing so rapidly and so quickly that you have to keep on re-educating yourself or getting new information, because otherwise you'll be outdated.
00:22:15.999 --> 00:22:28.252
So Stanford University is working on the whole idea of periods of training, periods of working periods of training, periods of relaxation, et cetera a whole new way of looking at life.
00:22:28.252 --> 00:22:42.590
And this is exciting and I can't see why people around the world don't find the excitement in that and the curiosity and see the possibilities for innovating, because it seriously is changing so much.
00:22:42.590 --> 00:22:44.977
There's not these three blocks of life.
00:22:46.125 --> 00:22:47.669
I really like the message.
00:22:47.669 --> 00:22:52.019
You're not done living just because you reach 65.
00:22:52.019 --> 00:23:00.123
And you mentioned kind of older people having unique experiences and possibly even first chances later in life.
00:23:00.123 --> 00:23:06.384
Were there any experiences like that that you had that you wouldn't have otherwise expected when you were young?
00:23:06.384 --> 00:23:07.326
Me?
00:23:10.811 --> 00:23:19.932
Sure, I seriously think that I've had the most wonderful last 15 to 20 years through the creation of the Parsadon Network.
00:23:19.932 --> 00:23:37.896
I'm the co-founder of that with a wonderful person called Dr Jan Hively, and how we got going I always like to tell the story was that I went off to the first ever Positive Aging Conference in Florida in 2007.
00:23:37.896 --> 00:24:02.832
And that's where I met Jan Hively, and she was running a workshop that was called Meaningful Work, paid or Unpaid, through the Last Breath, and I was just so fascinated by this because this goes back to what I said right at the beginning, that every age has its development tasks and I thought this was wonderful.
00:24:02.832 --> 00:24:08.330
So I stood in the long queue of people who wanted to speak to her at the end and I handed her my little card.
00:24:08.330 --> 00:24:34.546
At the stage, I was running an occupational health organization in France, in the Paris area, and I said to her if ever you come to Paris, come and come and talk to our medical doctors in the occupational field, because at that stage, which was 2008, the whole question of age in the workplace wasn't an issue, which it has now become more and more so.
00:24:34.546 --> 00:24:39.156
A year later, she contacted me and said I'm going to be coming to Paris.
00:24:39.156 --> 00:25:02.845
So she came and I introduced her to Dr Francoise Fauret, who was Mrs Gerontology in France at that time, and we organized a huge conference with the medical doctors of the whole Paris region and it was the first time that they had actually studied this whole issue of age in the workplace.
00:25:03.547 --> 00:25:07.396
And from then on we created the Pass it On Network.
00:25:07.984 --> 00:25:17.752
And Pass it On is to pass on whatever experience you have accumulated, basically to help yourself first and foremost.
00:25:17.752 --> 00:25:22.869
Secondly, to help your family and to help your community and remain engaged.
00:25:22.869 --> 00:25:38.116
And it was built on an organization that I created in Europe called Too Young to Retire, which was started in the United States by a super couple called Howard and Marika Stone and they were way ahead of the trend.
00:25:38.116 --> 00:25:43.315
But I mean the trend has happened so quickly because of the baby boomers coming up.
00:25:43.315 --> 00:25:52.298
They started in the year 2000 and they were ahead of the trend, together with Mark Friedman who had his civic ventures organization.
00:25:52.298 --> 00:25:59.978
So these things are just people who've been alive to what is happening and adjusted the life.
00:26:00.239 --> 00:26:06.325
And the whole thing about too young to retire was to retire, that horrible word of retirement.
00:26:06.325 --> 00:26:08.829
It's like just switch off.
00:26:08.829 --> 00:26:14.592
It's awful, it's retreat, it's withdrawal, it's just not on.
00:26:14.592 --> 00:26:20.597
So you don't have to carry on working per se, but you don't retire from life.
00:26:20.597 --> 00:26:27.278
You keep on living, and in an appropriate way to your circumstances, health and everything.
00:26:27.278 --> 00:26:37.605
The whole question of age in the workplace wasn't an issue, which it has now become more and more so.
00:26:37.886 --> 00:26:42.217
A year later she contacted me and said I'm going to be coming to Paris.
00:26:43.346 --> 00:27:06.058
So she came and I introduced her to Dr Françoise Fauré, who was Mrs Gerontology in France at that time, and we organized a huge conference with the medical doctors of the whole Paris region and it was the first time that they had actually studied this whole issue of age in the workplace.
00:27:06.605 --> 00:27:20.776
And from then on we created the Pass it On Network, and Pass it On is to pass on whatever experience you have accumulated, basically to help yourself first and foremost.
00:27:21.105 --> 00:27:25.825
Secondly to help your family and to help your community and remain engaged.
00:27:25.825 --> 00:27:46.336
And it was built on an organization that I created in Europe called Too Young to Retire, which was started in the United States by a super couple called Howard and Marika Stone, and they were way ahead of the trend, but I mean the trend has happened so quickly because of the baby boomers coming up.
00:27:46.336 --> 00:27:48.810
They started in the year 2000,.
00:27:48.810 --> 00:27:55.356
And they were ahead of the trend, together with Mark Friedman who had his Civic Ventures organization.
00:27:55.356 --> 00:28:03.012
So these things are just people who've been alive to what is happening and adjusted their life.
00:28:03.012 --> 00:28:11.890
And the whole thing about too young to retire was to retire that horrible word of retirement, it's like just switch off.
00:28:11.890 --> 00:28:17.711
It's awful, it's retreat, it's withdrawal, it's just not on.
00:28:17.711 --> 00:28:23.669
So you don't have to carry on working per se, but you don't retire from life.
00:28:23.669 --> 00:28:30.594
You keep on living and in an appropriate way to your circumstances, health and everything else.
00:28:31.897 --> 00:28:35.689
I want to touch a bit more on retirement and ageism in the workplace.
00:28:35.689 --> 00:28:47.145
Do you have any thoughts on what organizations can do to become more aware of their role in ageism, and if there's anything that they can potentially do to eliminate it?
00:28:48.387 --> 00:29:08.347
Well, I think that necessity is forcing people and forcing companies to realize what's going on, and I can just quote in Germany, for example, they're bringing back retired people because they don't have sufficient skilled people to fulfill the jobs, and this kind of thing is happening more and more.
00:29:08.347 --> 00:29:11.856
But I think that there's so much work being done in this field.
00:29:11.856 --> 00:29:22.938
You know, in the States we've got Janine van den Berg who's been really pushing this whole issue for such a long time of equity in the workplace and the right place for older people.
00:29:22.938 --> 00:30:00.578
We've got from our Parsital network, linda Smith in South Africa that runs an organization called 50 Plus Skills and she's been working for years now with the big companies to show them the importance of, number one, preparing people who are getting towards the retirement age, not to stop working or anything like that, but maybe to have some kind of flexibility in the changing roles and also to increase the number of people still at work in the 60 to 70 age group.
00:30:00.578 --> 00:30:07.595
That's what is really required and you can see many, many different examples today.
00:30:07.595 --> 00:30:23.951
For example, in some big management companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers Group, they have, I think, an age limit for their partners and then their partners are expected to go off and create something or to work with other people, so that's very good.
00:30:24.585 --> 00:30:27.295
In France, I know there are two things.
00:30:27.295 --> 00:30:38.093
There's the OECD that's been working very, very hard with big companies to get them to understand the importance of maintaining older workers.
00:30:38.093 --> 00:30:54.461
And then there's another recently formed organization I forget the name for the moment, but they are now it's a group of it's like a club of big companies.
00:30:54.461 --> 00:31:06.221
The human resource people are all working together and working on this whole issue of maintaining people in the workplace and continuing education, which is so important.
00:31:06.221 --> 00:31:11.154
So I think there's very much to be said about that.
00:31:11.174 --> 00:31:13.320
So I think there's very much to be said about that.
00:31:13.320 --> 00:31:25.689
And there's a great deal of research that has been done on the effectiveness of age, diverse work teams.
00:31:25.689 --> 00:31:36.519
In startups, for example, you get a far better success rate when you have a mixed team the older and the younger than when you have an all-young team or an all-older team.
00:31:36.519 --> 00:31:39.801
And I think, if you think about it, it's just totally logical.
00:31:39.801 --> 00:31:57.079
You know, the older people have the experience and the younger people have the tech and the drive and the curiosity and all the rest of it, and the mix is just it stands more chances of winning.
00:31:57.079 --> 00:32:33.358
So I think that we're actually living at the moment, a major change that is going on because of the lack of workers, of workers, and it's going to increase, because we're already seeing the articles about the start of the depopulation of the world sorry, I just wanted to add, like how you said, it was totally logical to have, uh teams in the workplace that are mixed like depending on age.
00:32:33.839 --> 00:32:43.195
I think yeah, just like how you would want to bring in perspectives from people of different backgrounds or races, different people of different genders.
00:32:43.195 --> 00:32:45.241
It's kind of the same idea, right.
00:32:45.241 --> 00:32:51.066
So yeah, absolutely makes total sense yeah, no, and I've been.
00:32:51.326 --> 00:32:58.364
You know, obviously, one reads a lot of these things and what we need, as for aging, is what happened with, uh, with women.
00:32:58.364 --> 00:33:07.993
You know how quickly has that changed women in the workplace, and more and more equality, and more and more equal pay for equal work, etc.
00:33:07.993 --> 00:33:08.493
Etc.
00:33:08.493 --> 00:33:20.922
And that's what we need to happen with aging, and that women's rights have been increased incredibly over a short period of time.
00:33:20.922 --> 00:33:30.099
So we need to do the same thing for ages, but it's not to fight for an age, it's not that at all, in my feeling.
00:33:30.099 --> 00:33:40.823
It's to fight for an understanding of the life course, and that it's rich and that everything you know it's like a book.
00:33:40.823 --> 00:33:43.356
You know a fabulous book that you've read.
00:33:43.356 --> 00:33:45.917
I don't want to go back and read Chapter 1.
00:33:45.917 --> 00:33:59.963
You know, you've read it, you've enjoyed it, you've assimilated it and life is a progression and it just gets deeper and better.
00:33:59.963 --> 00:34:04.900
So, anyway, that's the way I feel.
00:34:06.411 --> 00:34:12.384
Moira, if you're comfortable, do you mind sharing any personal experiences that you've had with ageism?
00:34:13.811 --> 00:34:21.704
Well, I think one that really gave me a shock was I'm busy sitting working happily at my computer and the doorbell rings.
00:34:21.704 --> 00:34:33.237
So I go there and there's this fellow and he's got a whole stack of papers and an iPad on top of it and he says that he's from the local utility company.
00:34:33.237 --> 00:34:36.235
I said yes and he said okay.
00:34:36.235 --> 00:34:44.159
So first of all I just have to ask you a few questions, okay, so name and address and telephone number, and then age.
00:34:44.159 --> 00:34:45.864
So I say my age.
00:34:45.864 --> 00:34:47.992
I think I must have been 72 at the time.
00:34:47.992 --> 00:34:48.532
So I say my age.
00:34:48.532 --> 00:34:51.297
I think I must have been 72 at the time.
00:34:51.297 --> 00:34:56.804
So he closes his iPad and he says you're too old, I can't talk to you, literally like that.
00:34:56.804 --> 00:35:00.931
So what do you mean?
00:35:00.931 --> 00:35:01.853
I'm too old and you can't talk to me.
00:35:01.853 --> 00:35:04.742
He said haven't you got somebody under 70 in your household that I can talk to?
00:35:06.152 --> 00:35:07.858
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
00:35:16.331 --> 00:35:17.492
Anyway, that was it.
00:35:17.492 --> 00:35:21.976
He couldn't talk to me because I didn't fit to his standard.
00:35:21.976 --> 00:35:27.001
And then there was another case that was also quite interesting.
00:35:27.001 --> 00:35:38.302
I've been going to the same gynecologist for forever, and the last time I went to her she didn't do a pap smear.
00:35:38.302 --> 00:35:42.659
I said, oh, aren't you going to do a pap smear?
00:35:42.659 --> 00:35:43.460
And she said no.
00:35:43.460 --> 00:35:44.762
And I said why?
00:35:44.762 --> 00:35:51.384
And she said well, it's not covered by the Social Security after a certain age.
00:35:51.384 --> 00:35:53.257
I said, oh, that's very strange.
00:35:53.257 --> 00:36:12.496
She said yes, because the pap smear is designed basically to detect sexually transmissible diseases, so the Social Security obviously expects you not to have any sexual activity after a certain age, because then you can't catch the disease.
00:36:12.496 --> 00:36:18.039
That was quite an interesting thing.
00:36:18.039 --> 00:36:18.981
That happened as well.
00:36:19.829 --> 00:36:24.101
So you have these odd things that happen and make you realize.
00:36:24.101 --> 00:36:28.898
Then, there are far more serious things.
00:36:28.898 --> 00:36:49.706
That that happen, though, is that, for example, if you want to get a house loan or you want to rent an apartment, and you suddenly find that the people renting the apartment now want your last three bulletins paychecks.
00:36:49.706 --> 00:37:03.721
So if you retired and your retirement is obviously a fraction of what your earning capacity was you really have difficulty getting a renting an apartment.
00:37:03.721 --> 00:37:07.338
You know those kind of things which are very serious.
00:37:07.338 --> 00:37:11.315
And insurance also.
00:37:11.315 --> 00:37:14.536
Sometimes in insurance companies it's limited in terms of age.
00:37:14.536 --> 00:37:19.538
If you travel, the travel insurance is much more expensive.
00:37:19.538 --> 00:37:22.463
The older you get, you know, et cetera.
00:37:26.251 --> 00:37:45.342
I guess through this podcast you're speaking to older people and younger people and Kira and I are in our 20s and other advocates and allies who are also of all ages, so what would you say to them about the work to bring about a convention and how they can be involved in the process?
00:37:46.170 --> 00:37:48.012
Well, I think it's just so interesting.
00:37:48.012 --> 00:38:02.025
You know, more and more and more and more people are talking about the necessity of intergenerational activities, and I'm obviously all in favor of intergenerational activities, but not if they're artificial.
00:38:02.025 --> 00:38:33.360
Taking small children to go and see older people in an old age home, it's fine, but it's like it's a one-off Christmas time or maybe Easter time or on some occasion, and it would be so much nicer if we could just try to work our societies to being more integrated and less chopped up like a sausage, so I don't know, just to try to get back to a society where there's interaction across the whole scope.
00:38:33.360 --> 00:38:38.617
You know I love to tell this story and it has to do with lifelong learning.
00:38:38.858 --> 00:38:54.358
In Africa One of our pioneers was a wonderful man called Tom Holloway and Tom was a computer engineer with IBM and he did his whole career with IBM and he died when he was 92.
00:38:54.358 --> 00:38:58.762
So you know that whole expanse and growth of technology.
00:38:58.762 --> 00:39:14.159
But however, when Tom retired he went to visit a friend of his in India and he was absolutely appalled at the way the untouchables were treated in India and he decided that he would like to do something with them.
00:39:14.159 --> 00:39:28.358
So he started to use his computer knowledge and he bought some computers and he started teaching computers and this ended up in Tom spending 16 years in India.
00:39:28.358 --> 00:39:38.090
He spent eight months a year in India and then four months back in the UK teaching and training people and when he came back to the UK it was because of his health.
00:39:38.090 --> 00:39:49.378
And he then got involved with our groups in South Africa and he helped us to set up a WhatsApp group for the University of the Third Age in Africa.
00:39:49.378 --> 00:40:03.320
So we've got now the University of the Third Age WhatsApp group in Zimbabwe and in Botswana and we're planning to move further up because the internet is very expensive in Africa.
00:40:04.061 --> 00:40:04.521
Number one.
00:40:04.521 --> 00:40:11.971
Number two the difficulties of having a consistent electrical supply is a big problem in Africa.
00:40:11.971 --> 00:40:29.925
So the way they do it now is, for example, it's the older group and they would have, for example, somebody talk to them about dementia and then the person would record six to eight clips of 90 seconds each.
00:40:29.925 --> 00:40:37.916
Just you know one would be what is dementia, how do you recognize it, and then what do you do about it and who can help you, et cetera.
00:40:37.916 --> 00:41:11.907
And these were just short little clips and then that's on for a month and then everybody listens to the clips, and then there's a big exchange between them you know this, and I've got this, and I've got a granny that puts this in my mother, blah, blah, and so it goes, and that, I think, is just a wonderful, wonderful use of technology in a situation where it would not be possible otherwise yeah, I feel like this whole conversation has really given me a lot to think about and opened my mind to.
00:41:11.927 --> 00:41:22.322
You know, even though the world is changing and there is ageism that goes along with that, and there's also more opportunities then to change the way that we live for the better.
00:41:25.471 --> 00:41:41.344
Yeah, I think we all just have to become more and more aware of how wonderful we are as human beings and that we all every single one of us, has incredible potential for just becoming the best that we can.
00:41:43.692 --> 00:41:44.916
Thank you so much for sharing that.
00:41:44.916 --> 00:41:50.512
We really appreciate it and appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be here with us.
00:41:50.512 --> 00:41:55.282
Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you would like to maybe bring up?
00:41:56.552 --> 00:42:05.885
you know, I think just that, the, just that the age, age is just a wonderful gift.
00:42:05.885 --> 00:42:10.056
You know, seriously, it's an absolutely wonderful gift.
00:42:10.056 --> 00:42:20.731
And if you get 60, 70, 80, and now people are living, as we said, more and more and longer and longer, it's an incredible gift.
00:42:20.731 --> 00:42:30.065
And when I was probably your age, somewhere around there, somebody said this to me and I have never, ever forgotten it.
00:42:30.065 --> 00:42:41.599
And they said to me that fate is the relentless result of your day-to-day activities, and I think that aging is very much like that.
00:42:41.599 --> 00:42:45.179
You know, you don't become wise because you're old.
00:42:45.179 --> 00:42:47.336
There's stupid old people as well.
00:42:47.336 --> 00:42:57.561
I mean, you don't just graduate to wisdom, but it's your life's experience that you accumulate.
00:42:57.561 --> 00:43:07.137
If, going ahead, we all just realize that life is an incredible gift and we don't know for how long we've got it.
00:43:07.137 --> 00:43:10.692
Today is the only day and it'll never come again.
00:43:10.692 --> 00:43:20.396
And that's what we need to do Just make every day the best day, and then you'll age like an angel.
00:43:21.820 --> 00:43:24.262
Well, you've made my day today the best day.
00:43:24.262 --> 00:43:25.304
Thank you so much.
00:43:26.710 --> 00:43:30.981
And I can feel it now, as I'm 78, going into my 80s.
00:43:30.981 --> 00:43:33.594
You just have a different.
00:43:33.594 --> 00:43:37.302
You know, your drive is different.
00:43:37.302 --> 00:43:40.818
What you're aiming at is different.
00:43:40.818 --> 00:43:46.436
It's evolved and, as I said about the book, I don't want to go back.
00:43:46.436 --> 00:43:51.038
I'm curious, I want to go forward, see what it's all about.
00:43:51.038 --> 00:43:53.719
It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:55.369
Thank you, moira.
00:43:55.369 --> 00:43:57.275
Yeah, I've enjoyed talking with you too.
00:43:57.275 --> 00:43:59.621
Okie dokes.
00:44:00.409 --> 00:44:02.014
Have a good rest of your day, Moira.
00:44:02.976 --> 00:44:04.541
Okay, lovely, thank you.
00:44:04.541 --> 00:44:05.342
Have a good weekend.
00:44:05.342 --> 00:44:06.994
Yeah you too, bye, bye.
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