Help the Aged
32 Dover St
London W1A 2AP
Tel. 01-499 0972

AIMS
To make old age a time of active happiness rather than a time of loneliness, suffering and deprivation. To involve all members of the community in assuming responsibility for their own and the world’s aged, whether living in Britain or overseas. To create conditions which enable the elderly to live lives which are full and rewarding.

METHODS
Help the Aged raises funds both to support projects which will improve the lot of the elderly directly and also to set up organisations in developing countries which can raise funds in their own country and render service to their aged. It campaigns, lobbies Parliament, informs the public and teaches children about the realities of ageing.

SUCCESSES
In just 21 years Help the Aged has grown to be the major international fund-raising organisation for the aged. In 1981 it raised over $9 million in Britain alone. It has set up Helpage India, and other similar organisations are established or being formed in Canada, USA, Kenya, Colombia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. It set up housing associations to provide sheltered housing for the elderly and it publishes its own news magazine YOURS for the elderly.

FAILURES
With the aged population of the world set to double over the next 20 years even Help the Aged’s best achievements will not keep up with the ‘inflation of need’ unless world opinion, and will to act, can be mobilised in 1982, the year of the World Assembly on Ageing.

FUTURE PLANS
Help the Aged is moving into largely unexplored fields such as medical research on the causes of ageing, the setting up of chairs of research, rural health schemes for the elderly in developing countries, and a swing to domiciliary services instead of residential homes. More organisations will be established and initiated to carry on Help the Aged work in more countries overseas.

HELP NEEDED
Volunteers are needed everywhere for gift shops, youth campaigns, local group fund-raising, distribution of YOURS to the housebound, Good Neighbour Groups, Adopt a Granny, friends for overseas aged, and campaigners in the corridors of power at home and overseas.

Age Concern England
Bernard Sunley House
60 Pitcairn Rd, Mitcham
Surrey. Tel, 01-640 54131

AIMS
To support services such as welfare advice, lunch clubs and day centres provided direct to pensioners by Age Concern groups throughout England.

To campaign to improve the living standards and quality of life of Britain’s 9.2 million pensioners.

To act as an information resource for organisations and individuals interested in issues affecting elderly people.

To initiate campaigns and projects that might otherwise not occur in order to try out new ways of catering for old people’s needs.

METHODS
Include: research on elderly ethnic minorities: an Action Against Crime Campaign; an information department with specialists in housing, income maintenance, health and social services, transport, fuel and consumer matters; training courses for those working with old people; over 60 publications including ‘Your Rights for Pensioners’ and a series of Action Guides for volunteers; full time Field Officers liaising with Age Concern groups in the localities; a Parliamentary Assistant who advises MP’s on the legislative needs of pensioners.

SUCCESSES
Over 1,000 local autonomous Age Concern groups using at least 60,000 volunteers.

FAILURES
Inevitably some groups cease to function due to financial or other problems.

FUTURE PLANS
To continue to encourage the setting up of Age Concern groups and provide them with information, advice, training opportunities and as much financial support as possible, and to press Parliament to improve the situation of pensioners, nearly half of whom are on or around the poverty line.

HELP NEEDED
Volunteers are needed locally to help with insulation schemes, serve lunches, befriend lonely pensioners, drive minibuses, raise funds, organise good neighbour schemes, help decorate pensioners’ homes and tend their gardens, run holiday outings etc.

Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace
3028 Danforth Aye,
Toronto, Ontario M4C 1N2
Tel. 416 698 7770

AIMS
To promote international solidarity among Canadians with the people of the Third World through financial support to socio-economic development projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia — and through a program of information, education and animation for Canadians.

METHODS
By promoting international co-operation and solidarity by funding development projects. Promoting a partnership with recipient groups based on solidarity, shared information, exchanges and mutual help.

Inform and mobilize Canadians through education programs aimed at promoting international solidarity. Development and Peace produces a broad range of information/action and education material throughout the year and a quarterly newspaper, The Global Village Voice.

SUCCESSES
Our education program has succeeded in informing people in Canada and worldwide about the causes and dynamics of under-development, mobilized large segments of the population around specific acts of solidarity, promoted a network of strong links between grassroots groups here and in the Third World and encouraged Christians to work for social justice.

Through its projects in the Third World it has supported the efforts of those who work to eliminate the causes rather than the symptoms of under-development.

FAILURES
Development and Peace has yet to become a ‘household word’ across Canada. We are not as well known as we would like to be nor is development education as widespread as it should. So while much has been accomplished since we began in 1967, much is yet to be done.

FUTURE PLANS
The launching of a special event called Third World Solidarity Day, (the first one was held on February 28th, 1982) to take place during Development and Peace’s Share Lent Campaign. The aim was to focus the Canadian public’s attention, especially the Church constituency, on basic issues affecting Third World countries.

HELP NEEDED
We need people interested in helping inform Canadians about the real causes of under-development in the world and sensitizing them to the situations, needs, problems, hopes and achievements of Third World peoples.