Advocacy & Lobbing
Milestone
- Every year on Jun-15 EFEF observes “ World Elders Abuse Awareness day” to lobby and advocate with Govt officials , community key stakeholders
- Every year Oct-1 “World Elders Day” is observed in which district level govt. Officials, VIPs, key stakeholders participate to show their solidarity with EFEF.
- In 2008, 1000 Elders from Cuddalore went to Delhi by special train to meet Mr. P. Chithambaram, honourable Finance Minister for submitting their demand for“Elders pension”.
- In 2016 200 Elders went to Chennai and met all political leaders in Tamil Nadu before the Election in order to voice their rights for inclusion
- 210 elders have been identified and selected by elders’ community as “Elders Community Resource Person” (eCRP) to lead specific community based activities in all the target villages of EFEF
It is imperative that for any long term change to take place for elders to live a better quality of life, implementation arrangements are to be supplemented and augmented with a conducive policy environment. To this end, a two pronged advocacy action is envisaged – vertical advocacy and horizontal advocacy. The Project looks at advocacy as a pattern of communication conducive to change perceptions of the elderly about themselves and the elders’ community as a whole.
The collectives of the elderly and participating members would be encouraged to experiment with the concept of Group Advocacy to voice the aspirations of constituent members and demand services to ameliorate their issues.