Week 2 - Class presentation

A rough expanation of our idea

Today we discussed our brainstorm of ideas and settled as a team on the idea of the 'age gap'. Looking specifically at the trends of the aging population, as the baby boomers look towards retirement. When this group of people find retirement we've identified, from our own observations, that there is still a desire to re-engage with society as they can get quite bored. Particularly because most of these people are still very mentally and physically capable people who can contribute to society. We've also looked at the way in which western society treats their elderly, compared to the way other cultures put these wise more mature people the pedestal they deserve to be on. What are the underlying things causing this and how can we change the perception. We think there's opportunities in mentoring, tutoring and social engagement for new mutually beneficial relationships to be sparked between these newly retired people and younger people like us.

The slide we presented is below

Feedback on our idea

We had positive feedback on the presentation of our idea. Anna specifically mentioned an example whereby Preschools were located near retirement homes in order to create similar positive effects. Infomation on that initiative is here and also here. We've also started to look into Age Concern, which is New Zealand's official programme for caring for the elderly.