year-old Paraguayan woman, had already been through the experience of going to a school to read books to children. Now children are returning the favor by going to the Asuncion geriatric hospital to read to the elderly, as part of a project aimed at inter-generational relations. The “I Learn More With My Grandparents” program in Paraguay has slowly been meeting goals, amid enormous difficulties. Organizers have set up libraries, have held training workshops, and now the exploration and exchange phase is underway. “Children start going to the geriatric hospital when they are able to understand that aging is something that begins from birth and it is not something that happens to other people,” says Patricia Gimenez, an official with the Paraguayan Social Action Secretariat. The project also attempts to encourage the idea that a geriatric hospital should not be a place where the ill are simply deposited but that it can also be a place to promote health and where old age can be assumed with dignity. “Children and young people open up to new proposals. They become interested in the subject and they must learn to break old paradigms and thus create an intergenerational communications network on the road to a different society, fairer and more balanced,” says Gimenez. Gimenez headed the First Ibero-American Congress on intergenerational relations and active aging, held in September in Asuncion and which brought together experts from Spain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The aim was to put old age on governments' agendas, to raise awareness and make authorities sensitive to the issue. “It is a seed that is planted and should give fruit in the future,” Gimenez says. Paraguay is a country with a population of 6.1 million inhabitants, of which about 500,000, close to 7.4 percent, are elderly citizens over 60. “They are all on the margins of society, and some live in dire poverty. Eighty percent of them are functional illiterates. And the problem is becoming graver because estimates place the population of elderly citizens at 10 per cent by 2050,” says Ramon Martinez, president of the Ibero-American Network of Elderly Adults. According to Martinez, “the cultural factor works brutally” against the problem of old age, and “it is difficult to move forward but we are on the path, and that's what is important.” He says that “it is necessary for governments to broaden their policies for this sector and to build networks of solidarity” so that the elderly are not isolated or do not become, as occurs in many countries, a “decoration” or “a piece of furniture” in families and homes. “We are guided by the conviction that only from the technique of comparative study can we find the minimum common denominators to find solutions within social action today with regard to intergenerational relations and active aging,” says the meeting's slogan. “There is much to be done. Only recently have the first steps been taken that can offer an initial understanding of the subject,” says Gimenez. Nonetheless, she trusts that progress will be made despite obstacles and shortages. Not all is lost, she adds. Gimenez has faith in young people and she is encouraged by women like Marcelina Palacios, “whose eyes light up” when she goes to the school, in the Santo Domingo de Trinidad neighbourhood of Asuncion, where children are conducting the reading programme for the elderly. – Deutsche Presse
