It gave me great pleasure to introduce Stephen Opie as our guest speaker at our last Monday evening meeting.
Stephen is the CEO of Aged Concern Wellington and has been in this position since April 2020. Stephen has extensive leadership experience in the charitable sector after spending 25 years working for various non-profit organisations.
His focus is on strategic leadership, project management, communications and the all-important fundraising.
The ethos of Aged Concern is to stand up for the rights of older people and advocate for them over major issues leading to a better quality of life for the future. Issues such as food, shelter, security, healthcare, discrimination and loneliness.
Aged Concern is celebrating their 50-year anniversary this year after formally restarting in 1975. Running with a small team of 9 staff, Stephen is the only full timer worker. There are however, 275 volunteers from the age of 18-85 who are the mainstay to providing the work and care that is needed in the community.
Research has shown that social isolation is a major factor amongst older people. It has also been proven this can lead to:
- A 40% Increased risk of dementia
- Shorter life span
- A 43% increase in Rest Home care
With life expectancy rising, social connection can aid in better mental and physical wellbeing. Lower Hutt alone has 28,000 older aged people at present and that number is rising steadily.
Aged Concern offers many services ranging from Fitness classes, companion walking, visitor and phone a friend service, staying safe driving course and help with tech devices.
Their communication support fields over 2500 calls per year from all over the globe requiring information of programmes for the older person.
A new initiative being worked on at present is a book called ‘A Century of Stories’ which involves volunteers interviewing those who have reached the age of 100 plus. So far, 32-33 interviews have been conducted.
There will be an exhibition of these stories shown at Summerset Boulcott November 12th at 4pm for those who wish to view.