Contribution short abstract:

Inclusion of older people’s voices and their meaningful engagement in knowledge-generation, policymaking and civil society responses provides an opportunity to place rights-based approaches and downward accountability at the centre of the Decade of Healthy Ageing.

Contribution long abstract:

The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021-2030 provides new opportunities for strengthening the inclusion, visibility and agency of older people, amplifying their voices, centring their meaningful engagement and emphasizing co-created solutions and bottom-up accountability. It also offers new ways to explore health and well being for both current and future generations while reflecting on the Anthropocene, on Nature, on decolonization and on different forms of knowledge and world views.

In this paper, we present how Participatory Video (PV) has been used to assess its feasibility to support small groups of older people in three different country contexts to amplify their voices and catalyse conversations between stakeholders at different levels. Older people made videos crafted around ‘healthy ageing’ and discussing their recommendations for state and non-state actors in local, national and international events.

In Togo, older people from rural and peri-urban contexts in Kpalimé reflected on intergenerational and livelihood tensions as well as access to public services and social activities. In Canada, indigenous older people on Manitoulin Island presented their perspectives on the importance of human as well as non-human connections and their broader historical context. In Jordan, older people from an urban mixed context in Amman, where refugee, displaced and host communities live side by side, highlighted challenges in their urban environment and how ageism affects them.

We reflect on if and how this pilot PV methodology intervention can support decolonizing processes and citizen-led design of ecologically-focused solutions for fostering healthy ageing as a key enabler throughout the Decade.