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My name is Saurav Sen and I am raising funds for "Celebrate Old Age" -- an internet-based platform that envisions a happier life for senior citizens, by leveraging internet-based tools and outreach and engagement processes that are aimed at bridging the gap between generations, especially school children. This, I believe is a mammoth culture shift that is urgently required to arrest the gradual disintegration of family structures, especially elderly parents becoming redundant and being consigned to loneliness and despondency.
With families falling apart, marital tensions becoming the order of the day, divorces going mainstream, old age homes thriving, many for the wrong reasons, ageing has been largely becoming synonymous with the grey of infirmities, limitations, proneness to falling ill, dependency on long term medication, financial insecurities in some cases — in short, life for the aged is increasingly being seen thru the prism of a grey, dimly lit room, the stigma of emotional deprivation and neglect, and the predominant hyphenated mentions of doctors, medicines, hospitals etc with senior citizens — more as a hygiene factor and an obligation, than as a part of the home’s priority set-up. This is where the mind has been revolting.
The it-can’t-be-helped hyphenation of old age with health-driven negativity and the support systems to counter them — dementia, nursing, loneliness, caregiving etc — can only be be turned sunny and bright by attempting to restore the family fabric — by addressing the challenges of today’s nuclear families, its professional pursuits, inter-personal frictions, and the sheer vulnerability of the institution of marriage. Celebrate Old Age (www.celebrateoldage.com) attempts to be family-focused, with a multi-pronged approach that is both restorative and transformative. We would like to look at elders, especially lonely elders, through the prism of families impacted by incarceration of any kind and effectively address the brokenness within the family unit.
And this needs the support of the younger lot — the school children, the impressionable adolescents and teenagers, who most often do not get to spend their growing up years with their grand parents these days due to nuclear families, professional travel compulsions of parents etc. When they grow up, old parents become dispensable at home too for a similar set of reasons. You reap as you sow, some say. And that creates the vicious social mill that churns out lonely and sullen senior citizens. This, though, is subjective logic and there may be a lot more to it.
We believe social change, at least in this context, can come best from the bottoms up. If school children realise the delicate emotional sensitivities of old age and the need to be more inclusive, celebration of old age can become easier. So, together we endeavour to do just that. Celebrate old age and the elderly from the bottoms up! Senior Citizens need to think of themselves as the mainstream of family life. Let the young convince the old that life can be young even at 100!
I am a senior journalist turned media consultant with 28 years of experience and I practise this belief myself by celebrating the old age of my mother each and every day. Celebrate Old Age is my personal commitment, and I would love to propagate this thoughtprocess through schools, cultural organisations and social media, so that the impact percolates down to the younger generations and we get to see a gradual return of sensitivity towards the aged and the lonely.
I have created the basic platform and have been popularising the thought of it in my own humble way. But I need resources to upscale the engagement and outreach by leveraging technology and strategic alliances with institutions.
Please help me fulfill my dream by contributing towards my project or sharing this fundraiser with your friends and family!
I will be grateful for your help!
My name is Saurav Sen and I am raising funds for "Celebrate Old Age" -- an internet-based platform that envisions a happier life for senior citizens, by leveraging internet-based tools and outreach and engagement processes that are aimed at bridging the gap between generations, especially school children. This, I believe is a mammoth culture shift that is urgently required to arrest the gradual disintegration of family structures, especially elderly parents becoming redundant and being consigned to loneliness and despondency.
With families falling apart, marital tensions becoming the order of the day, divorces going mainstream, old age homes thriving, many for the wrong reasons, ageing has been largely becoming synonymous with the grey of infirmities, limitations, proneness to falling ill, dependency on long term medication, financial insecurities in some cases — in short, life for the aged is increasingly being seen thru the prism of a grey, dimly lit room, the stigma of emotional deprivation and neglect, and the predominant hyphenated mentions of doctors, medicines, hospitals etc with senior citizens — more as a hygiene factor and an obligation, than as a part of the home’s priority set-up. This is where the mind has been revolting.
The it-can’t-be-helped hyphenation of old age with health-driven negativity and the support systems to counter them — dementia, nursing, loneliness, caregiving etc — can only be be turned sunny and bright by attempting to restore the family fabric — by addressing the challenges of today’s nuclear families, its professional pursuits, inter-personal frictions, and the sheer vulnerability of the institution of marriage. Celebrate Old Age (www.celebrateoldage.com) attempts to be family-focused, with a multi-pronged approach that is both restorative and transformative. We would like to look at elders, especially lonely elders, through the prism of families impacted by incarceration of any kind and effectively address the brokenness within the family unit.
And this needs the support of the younger lot — the school children, the impressionable adolescents and teenagers, who most often do not get to spend their growing up years with their grand parents these days due to nuclear families, professional travel compulsions of parents etc. When they grow up, old parents become dispensable at home too for a similar set of reasons. You reap as you sow, some say. And that creates the vicious social mill that churns out lonely and sullen senior citizens. This, though, is subjective logic and there may be a lot more to it.
We believe social change, at least in this context, can come best from the bottoms up. If school children realise the delicate emotional sensitivities of old age and the need to be more inclusive, celebration of old age can become easier. So, together we endeavour to do just that. Celebrate old age and the elderly from the bottoms up! Senior Citizens need to think of themselves as the mainstream of family life. Let the young convince the old that life can be young even at 100!
I am a senior journalist turned media consultant with 28 years of experience and I practise this belief myself by celebrating the old age of my mother each and every day. Celebrate Old Age is my personal commitment, and I would love to propagate this thoughtprocess through schools, cultural organisations and social media, so that the impact percolates down to the younger generations and we get to see a gradual return of sensitivity towards the aged and the lonely.
I have created the basic platform and have been popularising the thought of it in my own humble way. But I need resources to upscale the engagement and outreach by leveraging technology and strategic alliances with institutions.
Please help me fulfill my dream by contributing towards my project or sharing this fundraiser with your friends and family!
I will be grateful for your help!
