21 May 2024
A series of training sessions for people 65+ and specialists from territorial service centers of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection started in Minsk. There are already 3.7 thousand silver volunteers in Belarus, almost 3.3 thousand of them are women. The average age of a silver volunteer is 70 years. The idea is to further develop the ways and means of volunteering, to involve more older people in silver volunteering and to use new opportunities for this.
The School’s program is varied: training in information work techniques in social networks, methods of effective communication in mobilizing and attracting volunteers, and even neuro-gymnastics that develops cognitive abilities.
The School was opened by alternate SDG Youth Ambassadors Ekaterina Bobko (SDG “Good Health and Well-Being”) and Karolina Lapunova (SDG 5 “Gender Equality”).
Their interactive presentation focused on the connection between achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and overcoming ageist stereotypes regarding health issues, equal rights and opportunities for men and women and other stereotypes that limit the opportunities of people 65+.
«My 42-year-old daughter is faced with the fact that they don’t want to hire her because she’s not the right age – says one of the participants. – If my daughter, an accomplished specialist, experiences similar problems at 42, then what about the older generation?».
People 65+ want to be in demand. According to The 2022 Revision of World Population Prospects, the number of people aged 80 years and over is projected to triple, from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050. We are at the beginning of the Decade of Healthy Aging (2021-2030), which the UN is pursuing to ensure that both states and people themselves see and can realize the opportunities that allow older people to live and act in accordance with their values and ideas about themselves. One of these opportunities is silver volunteering. “School of Silver Volunteers” is taking place this year in all regions within the framework of the Joint Project “Support to the Efforts of the Republic of Belarus in Nationalization and Localization of SDGs”, implemented by UN agencies and funded by the Government of the Russian Federation. The trainings were organized by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Republic of Belarus with the support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Belarus.
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