Mayores de hoy: changing paradigms around aging

Status: Ongoing

Toluca, Mexico Mexico

Print this page City population: 800070% over 60Practice started in 2012

Summary

‘Mayores de hoy’ is an online community started in 2012 with the goal of making academic information about aging accessible for older people. A monthly average of 10,000 people visit mayoresdehoy.com. The top 5 accessed pages (posts) are:

“Fashion for elderly women beyond 60 years old”.
“As you can… get advantages of the INAPAM Card benefits”.
“Swim suits for elderly women”
“What kind of activities can I do with a blind person?”
“What laws and norms are being applied for the senior population in Mexico?”

Mayoresdehoy.com provides information about gerontodesign (age-friendly design) to provide readers tools for making their house or their parents’ house more age-friendly. In addition to the blog there is continuous contact on social networks like Facebook, so older people are using the contact page to ask for help in many topics like: legal aid or advice for designing rooms for their family members.

The blog also covers topics about nutrition, sustainable aging, post-retirement, and other related topics about aging and design. Some information is from academic journals, some information is from Government institutions like the National Institute of Geriatrics and National Institute of Older People, and also from international newspapers and courses I have taken. The readers of the blog (usually people 60 years and older) often get in touch, asking for more information about topics covered in the blog, and sometimes they provide their own articles which are then published on the website. Mayoresdehoy.com also has a Facebook page and a Twitter profile through which older people are able to get in touch with each other and share comments. Mayores de hoy has helped many people to feel less alone, and has helped them to feel like they are part of a community.

Website: https://mayoresdehoy.lat/

Key facts

Main target group: Both younger and older people (i.e. intergenerational)

Other target group(s): Designers focus in design for aging, caregivers and older people.

Sector(s): Education, Health, Housing, Information and communication, Urban development

Desired outcome for older people:
Be mobile

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:

Ageism
Accessibility
Ageing in place
Dementia
Healthy behaviours (e.g. physical activity)
Inclusion
Technologies

Contact details

Name: Maya-Rivero, Annika

Email address: mayoresdehoymx@gmail.com

Preferred language(s): Spanish, English

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Other

Other project lead: Individual

Others involved in the project:

Volunteers

How collaboration worked: Older people collaborate on writing their own articles in the blog. There is also people writing and sharing information about topics related to design, health and nutrition. Writers are recruited through a posted call for submissions, which are then emailed.

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: Older people are always participating through sharing and writing. Ideas about what is relevant to write are provided, for example perspectives about healthy aging or retirement.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? Yes

Feedback:
Positive feedback, readers love the blog and sometimes send good wishes and blessings. Usually I received comments like these: “Excellent advice, in September I am 74 years old, thank you for sharing”. “ You surprise me with your creativity and kindness to share your knowledge. Your article on the apps seems to me a great help to the elderly of today who are not so familiar with the current technology. Thank you.” “Thank you, very valuable” Most people tend to be happy to have found a website where older people are taken into account, where aging is talked about in a positive way. The needs that are not being addressed by mayoresdehoy.com are: Companionship for older people, legal aid and product sales like clothing or technical aids.

Expansion plans:
Yes, I am starting with the product design development, because I want to make products focus on instructive material for nursing centers and caregivers. Also I want to get more experienced writers. I would love Mayores de hoy to someday be a research center focused on aging and environmental design, gerontodesign and design for dementia / health.

Looking back

Reflections:
Moving forward, it would be good to have the support of more local older people, sharing life stories on the blog, and to write articles for the website in a way that is easier to understand.

Challenges:
The first challenge was funding the website. I started with my own money, paying the host and domain. So, I decided sell advertising space on my site to pay for the domain and hosting, but I only had maybe two or three ads, and then I decided to started with “wordads,” so from 2017 until present I have earned enough money to pay the domain and hosting, also to improve the site using video and audio posts. The second challenge is to find the time to make my blog successful. What I do is to always have a little time to post and write, recently most of the information was from my phD, as I used to read journals and then write a summary for the blog. Now that I have finished my phD, I have more time for working on the site. The third challenge is about writers. I recruited writers in 2018, and now mayoresdehoy.com has 12 people writing for it (including myself), geriatricians, lawyers, gerontologists, psychologists, designers… but they do not write often despite encouragement. I recruited them using the blog itself and social media, they send me their resumes and then have a page in the site. I applied to get an ISSN to give mayoresdehoy.com authors a good and safe way to write about aging and older persons.