The lives, achievements and contribution to society that the elderly have made are being celebrated by Manchester and Salford as part of Older People’s Day.
Today’s international celebration also marks the start of the city council’s month-long programme of events with their Age-friendly Manchester programme.
This aims to improve the quality of life for older people in Manchester and make the city a better place to grow older.
And speaking about today’s celebrations, Chief Executive of Age UK Salford David Haynes, is delighted with how events have gone.
“Older people need to be celebrated not only for what they’ve done, but what they’re doing,” he said.
“Today’s celebration for Older People’s Day saw a variety of events from a wide range of Salford groups.
“We had a presentation from the inspirational local woman Joy Watson, who received national media attention earlier in the year for her campaign to make Eccles a dementia-friendly town and Salford a dementia-friendly city.
“Salford Community Leisure led a series of chair-based exercises called ‘healthy hips and hearts’ to promote better well-being among the city’s older generation, for whom exercise is a bit more of a challenge.”
The Lord Mayor, Councillor Susan Cooley, designated that in her year of office Age-friendly Manchester will be the focus of the We Love MCR Charity, which was previously the Lord Mayor of Manchester’s Charity Appeal Trust.
And Councillor Cooley – who scooped the title of Age UK Councillor of the Year in 2013 for her work making Manchester the UK’s first Age-friendly City as awarded by the World Health Organisation – led the celebrations this morning at an event in St Mary’s Parish Centre in Levenshulme.
Elsewhere, Age UK Salford held their own event at Hemsley House on The Crescent.
Across Manchester a range of activities are available to older residents, such as easy rhythm and zumba classes, tours of the Royal Exchange theatre, lunch clubs, volunteering projects, grandparents’ weekends, film festivals and screenings, among many other support groups and events.
With life expectations on the rise, making the two cities better places to grow old is a top priority for both councils and the event aims to promote healthy life styles, partnerships working to combat loneliness, encouraging volunteering, and sharing skills across age groups.
People up and down the country are getting behind the campaign, often with examples of the pro-activeness of their elderly relatives.
Happy @OlderPeoplesDay. I would post a selfie with my amazing mum but she’s too busy off on holiday to Spain #positiveageing
— Rachel Gingell (@rachel_CRCymru) October 1, 2014
@OlderPeoplesDay #communicationopportunities #inclusivecommunication #positive thoughts about being #older pic.twitter.com/7oapMVmEad
— Tiffany Green (@TJG247) October 1, 2014
The celebrations come as part of a nationwide focus on improving and saving the lives of the elderly.
Manchester Fire & Rescue recently piggybacked on the ‘selfie’ craze to try and get members of the public to take a photo with their elderly relative, showing them testing their smoke alarm.
Going round your nan’s for tea? Test their smoke alarms, take a pic and post a #silverselfie http://t.co/5jTKiGYoEH
— Manchester Fire (@manchesterfire) September 29, 2014
Image courtesy of Garry Knight, with thanks
