Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Over the years the gap be­tween the el­der­ly and the youth has been grow­ing wider. The rea­son? Dis­con­nec­tion. Dis­con­nec­tion through lack of val­ues, prin­ci­ples, tol­er­ance and re­spect. In to­day's so­ci­ety youths are hard­ly en­cour­aged to em­brace, val­ue and ap­pre­ci­ate that the el­der­ly are still hu­man be­ings.El­der­ly peo­ple usu­al­ly re­ly on their chil­dren, rel­a­tives, re­tire­ment plans or pen­sion as their main source of in­come. Some, of­ten strick­en with ill­ness or med­ical prob­lems, are forced to live un­der in­hu­mane con­di­tions when they have no help. In some in­stances they are fi­nan­cial­ly abused by those claim­ing to be "care­tak­ers."The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment's Di­vi­sion of Age­ing, un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, sought to be­gin bridg­ing the gap through out­reach pro­grammes such as the el­der-youth ini­tia­tives, which saw youth ac­tive­ly in­ter­act­ing with el­ders. Now, the de­part­ment, which falls un­der Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, Ver­na St Rose Greaves, promis­es to close that gap.

It starts with us

But while the gov­ern­ment is do­ing its part, we don't have to wait for any gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op pro­grammes to un­der­stand that the old goes hand in hand with youth. Why? Be­cause the el­der­ly is the fastest grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, as we are all age­ing. At least that was the view of Youth Voic­es, a self-fund­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion based at 14 Hen­ry Road, Tu­na­puna. Ac­cord­ing to CEO of Youth Voic­es Mag­a­zine, David Mas­si­ah, through the ini­tia­tive, Help­ing Hands, the group has ral­lied teams of young peo­ple from a num­ber NGOs and youth-based or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out T&T to vis­it the el­der­ly and spend some qual­i­ty time with them. "Not just vis­it­ing and lis­ten­ing to old sto­ries. They do that too. But lend­ing a hand to do some of the things the el­der­ly can­not get done them­selves around the house."These youths are de­posit­ing good kar­ma in­to their life's ac­counts. They are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, where oth­ers talk and write and pos­tu­late about how bad things get­ting in the coun­try. They are mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence one el­der­ly at a time," said Mas­si­ah.

Know­ing they are loved

Mas­si­ah said the or­gan­i­sa­tion de­cid­ed to ven­ture in­to the ini­tia­tive be­cause be­ing a youth-fo­cused or­gan­i­sa­tion, it recog­nised the need to stay con­nect­ed to the el­der­ly as tra­di­tions, val­ues and morals were quick­ly di­min­ish­ing.More im­por­tant­ly, he in­di­cat­ed, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to just as­sure the el­der­ly that they were loved and need­ed was the or­gan­i­sa­tion's main fo­cus."It brings plea­sure to my heart when I see with my own eyes the life and joy on the faces of these spe­cial peo­ple when they are shown af­fec­tion by the youth."What we have start­ed is just a pi­lot project and we hope by next year the fruit of this ini­tia­tive would en­cour­age the more es­tab­lished foun­da­tions and cor­po­rate T&T to come on board, said Mas­si­ah.He added, "As a so­ci­ety we need to do more. We need to start in­cul­cat­ing in our youth the im­por­tance of re­spect­ing our el­der­ly."Youth Voic­es and the teams that vol­un­teered have be­gun to make a small dif­fer­ence. What have you done for the el­der­ly late­ly?"