Age Friendly Palmerston North working towards making the city better

An age-friendly world enables people of all ages to actively participate in community activities and treats everyone with respect, regardless of their age. Photo / Unsplash

Today we start a monthly column from Age Friendly Palmerston North, an umbrella group that is working towards the city being accepted as a member of the Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities.

OPINION:

Our mission is to create an age-friendly city encompassing and welcoming all ages to work together in our community.

Becoming an age-friendly city offers many benefits as it helps people age in their own homes and communities. This means their money, work and other contributions stay in Palmerston North. From a health perspective it means older people are able to live independently for longer – thus saving health-tax dollars and, more importantly, people stay happier and healthier for longer.

Palmerston North has a large number of older people and the city council is already doing many things that create an age-friendly environment. An age-friendly environment works for older people and also enables people with disabilities to lead a full life. From a population-health perspective ageing is often (but not always) accompanied by illnesses or disabilities.

As the World Health Organisation states: "Creating environments that are truly age-friendly requires action in many sectors: health, long-term care, transport, housing, labour, social protection, information and communication, and by many actors – government, service providers, civil society, older people and their organisations, families and friends."

This sort of environment makes life easier for everybody – a disability-friendly footpath, for example, will be less slippery and have fewer trip hazards.

Our group has concentrated on encouragement and acknowledgment of the contribution older people make to our community every day. One of the first activities we undertook was to celebrate the International Day of the Older Person on October 1 each year. The Older Person of the Year Awards have run successfully for the past four years.

The group is now working towards becoming a trust and plans to work with Horizons Regional Council and Palmerston North City Council to promote age-friendly environments and encourage older people to realise their full potential.

Each month we will share age-friendly initiatives and strategies.