Empowering older persons involves actively engaging them as agents of change to decide and take charge of their own lives and communities to overcome barriers and challenges, rather than be passive recipients of aid. Whilst seeking to improve the lives of older persons, top-down planning, and delivery of services without building their capacity to help themselves can limit their independence and reduce resilience.
Empowerment requires a paradigm shift in which older persons, government agencies and eldercare agencies form a partnership and collaborate to solve issues to address their needs. This process not only increases their level of participation, but also confidence, skills, and knowledge through capacity-building.
- Adopt an organic approach that mobilizes older residents to contribute to the development of their communities. For example, allow them to define and decide on areas to develop for older persons and assist them with co-creating solutions. These can range from access to micro-credit, job training, access to care, disaster management and so on etc.
- Strengthen existing older people’s associations or organizations by convening the members to formulate their constitution, bylaws, vision, and mission. Trainings should aim to develop their capacities in organizational and program development, advocacy and lobbying, and networking and partnership building for them to represent their interests and plight.
OPAs are commonly found through Southeast Asia. Most are self-managed organizations sustained by a mixture of membership fees, government funding and fund-raising. In Thailand, OPAs across the country congregate to form the Senior Citizen’s Council. Leaders of the council are consulted by the ministries, see Case Study 3.5a on how the council advocated for higher pensions for older persons.
In 2009, the Senior Citizen Council of Thailand collaborated with NGOS such as FOPDEV and HelpAge International as well as academics to successfully convince the government to increase the Universal monthly Old Age Allowance from 200 baht to 500 Baht. Since then, the coalition has continued to suggest improvements in the policy. Their sustained engagement efforts led to another increase of the old age allowance in 2011.
- Provide small seed funds to older persons to organize their own activity/business and be independent, such as the Elder Fund in Thailand, see Case Study 3.5b for more details.
- Fund could be given directly to older persons or through agencies, who work with older persons, to administer these funds and support them in organizing their activities.
Many older persons in Thailand are small business owners (e.g., farmers, small provisional stores, etc.). To further encourage older people to start their own activity and be independent, the Thai government has set up a national ‘Elderly Fund’ to provide interest-free loans to older persons, or organisations working for older persons. The aim is to empower older adults to start their activity or continue in their businesses to generate income and be more self-reliant. Since its inception, the fund has been administered in 77 provinces across Thailand to 2925 small businesses owned by older persons.
- Participatory needs assessment: involve older persons to do community assessment on the needs of varying subgroups of older persons as well as service gaps. See Case Study 3.5c for how the EMPOWER program in Singapore galvanized older persons to do so.
- Ranking of solutions: Use findings from the needs assessment to form groupings based on issues that participants want to address. A community-design thinking format could be used, whereby members from different backgrounds convene to brainstorm and design solutions.
- Stakeholder engagement and implementation: With the suggested solutions, participants would engage relevant stakeholders, e.g., government agencies to obtain support to implement proposed solutions. Community organization or non-profit organization catalyzing this process may need to connect the dots to support older persons in engaging these relevant stakeholders, as well as facilitate conversations to align goals and expectations of both sides.
Older persons were trained on qualitative methods and interview techniques in the EMPOWER program to collect data on challenges older people faced in their community with a buddy and researcher. Four issues were surfaced through more than 100 interviews: age discrimination, social isolation, caregiving stress, challenges in accessing services and navigating the built environment. Participants used the findings to co-create solutions with stakeholders.
Older persons’ ability to voice their opinions and work on solutions that improve the lives of other members can directly increase their Sense of Control (IC4), purpose and Perceptions of Ageing (IC5).
- Increase ownership of co-designed services and program activities by letting participants have a role in managing it. Various roles could be carved out for older persons (e.g., secretary, marketing, partnership etc.) according to their desired level of participation and taken on through voting, see Case Study 3.5d for example.
- Allow participants to understand challenges in managing the service/program and induct their skills/experiences in mobilizing resources to help sustain the service/program.
A wheelchair-friendly community shuttle co-designed by older persons in the EMPOWER program in response to challenges accessing services in the neighborhood for frail and disabled older persons. Participants planned the routes, took on roles to sell tickets, and review users’ experience, with the support of community partners. Evaluation showed that compared to the control group, participants had higher collective efficacy and confidence to advocate for community issues after one year.
Throughout the whole process, older persons should be very involved and have opportunities to participate and make decisions.
From our case studies, we found clear benefits of using these empowerment approaches. Older participants from Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand felt a greater sense of community and collective efficacy (CC4) as they co-created solutions and organized activities with the support of OPA and other forms of community organizations. Training and interaction with stakeholders enhanced their knowledge and skills in assessing needs of older person in their community and program planning (IC8). In this way, participatory design often results in services and community solutions that are tailored and sensitive to the needs of intended user (CC14). Such empowerment approaches particularly strengthen older women’s confidence to play active roles in their communities in Southeast Asia - many of whom were not given the opportunities to voice out or receive an education due to social norms of that generation.
- To encourage uptake, simplify forms and bureaucratic procedures required for older persons to apply for funding but ensure fair guidelines on how to use resources and funds provided.
- Sufficient training and support must be provided for older adults to move up the ladder of participation, so they do not feel overwhelmed and bound to do everything on their own, see Good Practice 3.4 on equipping older persons with skills and knowledge to mobilize resources. The empowerment toolkit by the National Council of Social services could assist practitioners facilitating OPAs to periodically reflect and assess how much they practice empowerment.
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