Volunteering and Youth Engagement Helps Elderly

Author: jaideep khanduja Published: December 16, 2009 at 7:19 am

Isolating oneself from life and social activities as you grow older is a common phenomenon worldwide. Due to various reason, as one gets older, they at times can draw away from family, friends, children, society, hobbies, happiness etc. and go into a mode of silence and thinking.

However, a recent study conducted by researcher at the prestigious John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, have proven that volunteering can help improve the aging process in a positive way. By using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology, researchers have found that when the elderly engage in more social activities like tutoring children, social get together, mentoring, social service programs, volunteering with kids, it helps keep the brain active, healthy and agile for a longer period as compared to those elderly that do not volunteer.

The study was conducted in association with Experience Corps on 17 women aged 65 or older. Experience Corps is a national volunteer service organization conducting regular programs to engage elder community to help urban children in their studies.

In the US, the population moving towards retirement age is roughly 78 million while the average life expectancy rate increasing.

Per the research, such activities engaging older adults with children or with people needing volunteer services increased older people cognitive and physical abilities. As per the statement given by the associate professor working in the department of Mental Health and Center on Aging and Health in Bloomberg School of Public Health, “We found that participating in Experience Corps resulted in improvements in cognitive functioning and this was associated with significant changes in brain activation patterns.”

Workshop "Youth for Elderly"

The Two half day workshop on “Youth for Elderly” was organized by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, on 18^th and 19^th July,2011,mainly to bring together the two focus areas of CLL, the youth and the elderly. 

The Two Half Day Workshop was designed mainly to sensitize the college youth of the colleges falling under M Ward on the Elderly Issues and to motivate them to work for the care of Elderly. 

Total 5 colleges from M-ward were chosen for this workshop. Six NSS volunteers from each college along with their Programme Officer were invited to participate. The participants of this workshop included 39 students and 3 program officers (total-42) from 5 colleges of M-ward, namely; Dr. Ambedkar College of Arts, Science & Commerce, Shri Narayan Guru College, N. G. Acharya and D.K. Marathe college of Arts, Commerce and Science, Swami Vivekanand College of Science, Arts and Commerce and Mahatma Gandhi Society.

The sessions of the workshop were designed mainly to provide the participants with a comprehensive knowledge on the issues of elderly and the ways by which these issues can be tackled in the field. In our society some people tend to carry their own myths and disbeliefs vis-à-vis the elderly. The elderly are generally labeled as irritating, physically and mentally weak, very interfering people etc. So, to start with, breaking of these myths and disbeliefs is very essential in order to gain a proper understanding of the problem. Hence the first session of the workshop was on Aging- Myths and Realities. The second session on Issues and concerns of Elderly was mainly an attempt to widen the horizons of the participants on some facts and to develop sensitivity towards the issues of elderly. The issues of the youth vis-a-vis elderly were also addressed in this session. This helped the youth in understanding and analyzing themselves in relation to the elders.

The second day of the workshop concentrated on providing field based inputs to the participants regarding the work being done by NGOs working in the area of elderly. The first session on Working with the elderly strived towards acquainting the participants regarding the plight of a range of senior citizens in our society and the services being provided by various organizations working on elderly with a special focus on the work done by Dignity foundation (an NGO working for elderly). The second session was an attempt to familiarize the participants on the rights and entitlements of the elderly, which is very important to know while working with them. And lastly, in the last session the CLL team sat with individual colleges and helped them develop a feasible action plan that would integrate the concept of Youth for Elderly (working with the elderly) with the NSS activities at the college level.

Thus, the whole workshop was an attempt to enlighten and sensitize the youth, making them aware about the power they have to bring about a positive change in the life of the elderly.