World Colleges Information

Dear Everyone

We are launching a national photo competition in association with The Hindu to raise public awareness of the reality that a lot of older / elderly people work late in life and cannot afford to stop working!

Through the photo competition, we hope to highlight the important economic contribution that older people actually make to the economy, contrary to the popular view that the elderly are a burden and drag on the country’s limited finances.

The aim is to document the incredible determination and endurance of older workers, build recognition of older workers as workers and provide the evidence that the denial of older people's livelihood rights is an issue that has to be addressed.

Older people's rights to and in work and their economic capacity to stop working are issues that affect every one of us; directly as an older person, through our links to older people and as the future generation of the aged.

We are hoping that the competition will appeal to a very wide cross-section of society and will prove to be an interesting and effective means of securing widespread support for older people's
rights.

How you can help:
   (i) please circulate the announcement of the competition below;
   (ii) please take part yourself, by submitting photos.

There is another way you can help - and this will be an important way of participating in the exercise to bring greater attention to the situation of the elderly in India - BY ONLINE VOTING on the photo competition!

If you wish to participate further and are able to organise some way for people without cameras to join in and people without internet to vote that would also be truly wonderful.

The competition is at:

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/zooming-in-on-the-elderly/article4862886.ece

With many thanks and best wishes

Penny Vera-Sanso (Birkbeck, University of London)
V Suresh (Centre for Law, Policy and Human Rights Studies, Chennai)

Dr Penny Vera-Sanso

Programme Director, Anthropology
Assistant Programme Director, Development Studies
Lecturer Development Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
32 Tavistock Square, Room 403
London WC1
email: p.vera-sanso@bbk.ac.uk

Principal Investigator:
Ageing, Poverty and Neoliberalism in Urban South India
New Dynamics of Ageing, a UK Cross-Council research programme
and
Ageing and poverty: the working lives of older people in India, ESRC
Follow-on Funding
email: pverasanso@yahoo.com