A social movement to enable positive ageing.
“One city, all ages”, a social campaign that aims to collectively change our mindset, beliefs, values and assumptions, seeking society’s collaboration to help older people overcome physical challenges, while addressing the emotions of grief, insecurity and loss that they experience on a daily basis.
The Facts
Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among older adults, causing hip fractures, head trauma and death.
The fear of falling can lead older adults to limit their activities, which can result in physical decline, depression, and social isolation.
Why is this relevant to everyone?
By 2050, the proportion of people aged 60 and over will double.
The good news is we have amazing people and organizations that are doing something with products, apps or services to paliate elderly physical challenges.
But for some reason, the adoption of these new technologies has been rather low.
And so we challenged ourselves to understand why.
We used different research tools to better understand older people and their physical mobility. Their pain points, how they are seen by others, how they interact.
We seek to understand the whole ecosystem in which they live.
We learned that elderly are challenged with physical mobility issues and therefore are going through a grieving process in which they have to accept new physical limitations and let go of what they used to be and do
They are trying to find a new purpose for this stage of their life, and at the same time, they try to adapt to a context that keeps evolving without them.
They fear being left out of decisions and being a burden to others.
This emotional process is invisible to others also to families and caregivers, even though they are close to them. They care so much about him, that’s why they are so focused on providing solutions to reduce the physical pains of the elderly, but they lack the tools to better understand what they actually are emotionally going through.
In addition, living in a society that glorifies youth and whose main policies do not include elderly needs makes it even harder for families and caregivers to seek for support on how to help the elderly.
This all results in an invisible emotional gap between the elderly and the others.
The outside world does not really understand the elderly, they do not know how to deal with them, and therefore the adoption of technology now seems a relative concept. Why do we only focus on adapting the elderly to a society that, in general, does not take them into account?
That is why we developed “One City, All Ages”, a social campaign that aims to bridge that gap, seeking society’s collaboration to help the elderly overcome physical challenges, but also addressing the emotions of pain, insecurity and loss that they experience on a daily basis.
And as a collaborative effort with i4life and The Community of Madrid, this social campaign will be implemented in 3 phases that will exponentially generate a comprehensive mindset change from Madrid to the entire country.
1. Set in motion
First, we will launch call-to-action ads that show a stark contrast between the UN’s goals for human well-being and the current situation.
Our aim is to trigger people’s empathy for the struggles of the elderly – and for the elderly to become more visible and know that they are not alone. and for the elderly to become more visible and know that they are not alone.
We will rely on our partners and the facts of the UN SDGs to assert credibility.
The visual format is based on our internal research for optimal impact:
- 70% of people prefer contextual photos and data to capture the full message.
- 90% agreed that real human faces and everyday activities, such as crossing the street, were most effective in making them feel connected to the topic.
All participants agreed that including a “how could we?” question was provocative enough to get them more involved.
2. Cohesion
By scanning the QR code people will access a website that captures who we are, and how we will make these previous struggles tangible in actions.
- The elderly will find allies such as i4life that will empower their autonomy with products like Pauto.
- Families can join safe spaces to speak freely about their concerns for their relatives and how to help them.
- Professionals can keep up to date with the latest trends in medicine with reliable newsletters to provide the best service to elderly.
- And the community can engage with its context through greater civic participation and create better and more inclusive policies.
3. Solidification.
By leveraging the Comunidad de Madrid policy-making, i4life know-how on elderly needs, and our weight as a society, we will crate the Elderly inclusivity index .
- Addressing the need of companies to validate their level of commitment to the change society is demanding.
- We will consolidate this mindset in all levels, scaling from cities into a “one country, all ages” type of change.
As we navigated the struggles of the elderly population and understood society’s current structure and systems, we believe:
Adapting to the elderly not only means shaping our environment to better meet our needs of the future. It means creating a mindset that acknowledges how change is the only certainty we have, and how the greatest asset for adapting is to understand and communicate with each other.
