From Sierra Leone, to Ghana, to Tanzania, campaigners have shown their support for Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by joining together and raising their index fingers at 1pm on 1 October – but they didn’t stop there!
Campaigners took action across Africa
In Cameroon, 200 older people marched through Tubah drawing a huge crowd of onlookers, many of whom even joined the march!
Another 200 older people in Kenya marched to parliament to meet ministers and present a list of requests to the Prime Minister from older people in the country.
In 2008 in South Africa an amazing 2,000 people made their voices heard in a colourful march across Durban and in Zimbabwe, 200 older people were supported by younger campaigners in a procession across Harare.
Governments made changes
Thanks to these amazing campaigners, we saw change starting to take place in many countries. In Kenya, the government allocated 550 million Kenyan shillings for a pension fund, making life better for a massive 33,000 older people!
There was success in Ethiopia too, with the government promising to make both water and health services free for older people.
In Sierra Leone, a committee was formed to write a national policy on the welfare of older persons. And in the Sudan, HelpAge was even invited to work with the government to draw up a policy for older people.
There is still more to do!
A huge amount has been achieved but there is still more to do and we hope to make Age Demands Action 2010 even bigger and better than the last two years!
Older people are still being discriminated against and seen as a burden, so more still needs to be done by national governments.
Age Demands Action!
You can part of ADA 2010 by signing the global petition now.