WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers on the Move!
WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers on the Move!
Faith Young: “Any lack of protection of the human rights of older persons affects everyone else, so I hope more people will see that - and how interconnected everything is.”
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!
Welcome. This is Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host for the Wisdom at Work podcast. Elder Women, older Women and Grandmothers on the Move. What follows is a special and exciting 10-part series. Have you ever thought about how human rights plays an essential and meaningful role in our older age? Well, you're in the right place. 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. 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.
Speaker 1:Now Join the movement and raise your voice. 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. 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. 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. Faith. Welcome to the podcast as an interviewee, not an interviewer. It's great to have you here, thanks. So I thought it would be very useful and interesting to ask you what, in your lived experience or education, has led to this moment where you're getting involved in the promotion of the rights of older persons.
Speaker 2:Right, well, I guess. Firstly, I'm finishing up my undergrad, but my study is in business, so it's not really related to human rights or anything like that related to human rights or anything like that. Really, I started to think more about how older person's rights can be protected, or how they're not being protected right now, when I was working at an affordable housing organization in British Columbia, and this organization basically provides housing to people who can't afford to pay a regular market rent. So there's a variety of tenants and they kind of focus on creating a safe space and mental health support, health care support, and there's a lot of emphasis on community development as well. And so while I was working there, I noticed that a disproportionate amount of the tenants were actually older persons, and even though this organization doesn't just serve older persons, there was a big portion that are older persons who ended up at this organization.
Speaker 2:And then I've learned that older people are disproportionately impacted by homelessness and housing insecurity, and I learned that, whether it's because they can't afford to pay the market rates of rent anymore, maybe the pensions that they receive aren't enough to cover the rent that's so high, or sometimes their original homes are slated to be developed, so they're torn down and then that leaves many of these older people displaced or whether it's because of healthcare reasons.
Speaker 2:So that's how I started to think more about older persons and their rights. And then, through my aunt Margaret Young, her work with Garup and Age Noble and all the stuff that she's doing, that's how I was then able to go to the open-ended working group on aging in New York earlier this year, which was the 14th session. It was the last session of that, so that was pretty cool and preparing for that then I started to learn more about what a UN convention on the rights of old persons would look like and why it's needed and why it's important. That's how I ended up then becoming interested in doing more and learning more, and now that's led to me doing this, which is really great because I get to see not only the work that some of these older campaigners are doing, but also learning about their personal stories and their motivations behind what they're doing.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was thinking about speaking with you, faith, and with Kira, one of the things that I thought about was that I actually have not heard from young people why they think intergenerational work is important. I've heard a lot from older women about why they think it's so important to work with their grandchildren, other younger people and have that intergenerational solidarity movement. I'm really interested to hear from your perspective why do you think it's important for young people to be involved in promoting the rights of older people?
Speaker 2:I think it might be a similar reason to how a lot of older people feel that's important. Just with anything, if you're working towards something and you're working with other people, I think it's important to have different perspectives and people can bring different strengths and skills. So just like how different genders or different races, different backgrounds are important, different ages are important as well to have in a team or in a group of people who are fighting towards something, and I feel like that will make the movement more impactful, hopefully. And I also think that having younger people involved, that hopefully people will see that a UN convention isn't something that's just for like a separate group of people, like a static older persons at one point in time, but that it's going to be for everyone who grows older. So that's why I think intergenerational involvement is important.
Speaker 1:I really agree with you. As a young woman, do you have thoughts about gender and aging and the need for convention?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my thought is that being an older woman is double the effect not double necessarily, but a lot more challenges and unique challenges I guess that older women face.
Speaker 2:And, as a young woman, knowing what the challenges are for women growing up, to know that there's even the added challenge of being an older person as you grow older is pretty, I guess, scary or not nice. I wouldn't want that to happen in my own life or in any of my friends' lives or sisters' lives. And then I was just thinking also of at the open-ended working group that I attended, there was a side event where an older woman spoke about how in many cases, she and other older women were expected to just give up work at a certain age and then expected to care for their grandchildren. So I was thinking that having that autonomy taken away, like you're just expected to do something you don't really have the choice, is not something that I want for myself either. I mean, obviously, if you choose to look after your grandchildren, then that's fine, but if you don't want to, you shouldn't have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting perspective, because, of course, discrimination on the basis of gender also has a life cycle. It looks different at different stages of life. It there something in particular that stayed in your mind for you in terms of the interviews that you've done or the stories that you've heard?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I have to shout out both of the interviews that I was part of.
Speaker 2:When I was interviewing Moira, she changed the way that I saw aging because she said, once you reach a certain age like 60 or 65, but then anything after that you're categorized as an older person and then, even though there's so much variety and richness within that, but everyone just views you as belonging to a certain category, which you would never do for ages zero to 40.
Speaker 2:So I thought that that was really interesting to hear about and as more and more people come to realize that, then hopefully this issue will seem that much more important to people. And then, when I was speaking to Ferdushi, she talked about how her organization that she's a part of was the first one and still one of the only organizations to offer microcredit loans, because people were afraid that the older people who received these micro credit loans wouldn't be able to pay them back, but they have never had anyone default on a loan. So I thought that was pretty amazing, clear proof that older people are capable and they have, like so much value to offer to the community and they're able to be involved in community development based on their own ideas and capabilities. So I thought that was very interesting and that there's more opportunities like that that are needed for older people.
Speaker 1:That moves sort of beautifully into the convention itself. What's compelling for you about a convention on the rights of older persons? What could happen to bring this to fruition?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess I would just start by saying that as I've grown up, I've always viewed the United Nations as such a powerful intergovernmental organization or body that can influence people at all levels to make change and to bring about good quality of life for people and a good standard of living. That seeing that in action at the Open-Ended Working Group was pretty interesting and, yeah, seeing the involvement of all of these activists, civil societies and campaigners who are doing all this work was really cool. I think me getting involved or starting to get more involved at this time is very interesting, and I've been very fortunate because there's been a lot of developments in the past year towards actually getting a UN convention in place, so that's really good to hear. I know for some people it's been a long time coming and there's been such slow progress, but for me I've been able to see a lot of progress happen, I guess, in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2:I think a UN convention will bring about laws and policies that will help to protect the rights of older persons but also bring about, as Vijay said in his interview, change in attitude from the ground up towards older persons and aging, and actually Garup is doing a social media campaign that's trying to get people to share what they hope their older age will look like, what they want it to look like. So I was trying to think of what I would say, and it could be anything something more formal. I guess, like you want the right to security, social security as you age, or the right to participate in community, or even something more like being able to feel safe at home, or feel safe on the streets, streets or feel that you're able to have good health care, and then I was thinking that I would want all of that and, as well, be able to have the freedom to make my own choices and live autonomously, because I think that's quite important. So hopefully a UN convention would enable all of that to happen.
Speaker 1:That's the idea, Absolutely and finally, Faith. What would you say to younger people and to older people about what you see as the role that you can play and other younger people can play being involved in bringing a convention into being?
Speaker 2:I think hopefully more younger people can see that the UN convention affects everyone at all ages, as Teresa said in her interview. That I really liked was that a UN convention will be not just for older people, but it will also be for all their families or for anyone who is interacting or in contact in connection with an older person, because any suffering that an older person has or any lack of protection of their human rights affects everyone else. So I hope that more people will see that and see how interconnected everything is.
Speaker 1:If you think, about where you were before you started doing any of this work, even before you started doing the work on housing. You think about where you were there in relationship to thinking about older people and older people's lived realities and all this diversity and their rights, and you think about where you are now. What has that brought into your life? That knowledge, that understanding?
Speaker 2:I think it's basically opened my mind more to what the different as you said realities are out there, because if I think of my own grandparents, I never really put myself in their shoes before this, in terms of what makes them feel secure or what makes them feel happy, and how that is influenced by outside factors that in Canada or in Malaysia, where both of my grandmas live right now, might be provided to them or might not be. So just more of an awareness that things are different for everyone and to pay more attention, I guess, to what everyone is facing.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, thank you, faith. Thank you for all of your involvement in this wonderful initiative, and you're really inspiring and thoughtful ideas and thoughts that you've shared with us today. For me, this process has been much richer because you've been in it, so I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad to hear that and I've learned so much as well, so it's been really nice to be.