As Egypt’s population ages, the challenges faced by the elderly are becoming increasingly prominent. With a growing number of seniors needing to navigate various daily life issues, healthcare services and financial security and social support are becoming more and more important to many.

 Responding to this situation, the Ministry of Social Solidarity has put in place policies intended to ensure a better life for more and more elderly people in Egypt. In 2019, it launched its Elderly Companion Project that is intended to maintain social cohesion and the family unit by providing home-based care for the elderly as an alternative to institutional care.

As part of the project, young people are trained to become home companions for older people.

The ministry also played a key role in preparing a new law that aims to provide better social protection and social care and secure a decent and dignified life for the elderly. In September 2021, the law on the rights of the elderly was approved by the cabinet.

To mark this year’s International Day of the Elderly, which takes place on 1 October, Minister of Social Solidarity Maya Morsi announced the launch of activities under the presidential initiative Bedaya Gadida le Benaa Ensan (A New Start for the Human Being), including an Arab Day for the Elderly.

The activities aim to raise awareness of the rights of the elderly and highlight the role of caregivers. An entertainment programme was implemented with the participation of 40 men and women in homes and clubs for the elderly from Minya, Sohag, Luxor, and Aswan in the Aswan governorate that included visits to tourist destinations and awareness seminars.

In Alexandria, 150 elderly men and women from Kafr Al-Sheikh, Beheira, and Alexandria took part in cultural competitions, an exhibition of products by the elderly, and a talent show. The Egyptian Red Crescent participated by providing medical services to the participants and a campaign called “See Tomorrow with Your Own Eyes” that offered free eye examinations.

In Ismailia, a health awareness and entertainment programme was launched that included a visit to the Ismailia Museum and other sites with the participation of elderly people from Cairo, Giza, Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said. In Sharqiya, gifts were distributed to the elderly at home and a marathon was also organised.

In Daqahliya, an event was organised with the participation of elderly people from Qalioubiya, Cairo, Gharbiya, and Menoufiya, as well as Daqahliya itself. The event included artistic, cultural, and religious competitions.

The ministry will soon inaugurate a physical therapy centre for the elderly at the Um Kolthoum Care Home in Helwan with support from the Nasser Social Bank. This will provide physical therapy for elderly people both inside and outside care homes and will also provide another physical therapy centre in a nursing home in New Damietta with equipment.

Medical convoys organised by the Egyptian Red Crescent will tour the governorates to provide medical and therapeutic services to the elderly.

The Ministry of Social Solidarity is working to provide equipped accommodation for the elderly that includes all types of social, health, recreational, and economic care. It is also working to protect the elderly from abuse or neglect.

A new training curriculum for those working with the elderly has been developed and protocols signed with private institutions working in the field. A new Higher Committee for the Elderly has also been founded.

There are some 173 nursing homes in 22 governorates and 191 clubs for the elderly that provide them with services and protection. There are 26 physical therapy units and 27 elderly service centres.

Law 19/2024 was ratified in April, the law on the rights of the elderly, that aims at protecting the rights of the elderly and ensuring they receive their social, political, medical, economic, cultural, and recreational rights.

Under the new law, elderly people cannot be admitted to care homes without their permission. Those who do not have someone to care for them are exempt from the costs of their accommodation in social care institutions for the elderly. They are also partially exempted from the costs of using state-owned public transport and attending cultural venues like theatres and museums.

The law also offers them legal assistance if needed as well as healthcare and financial support.

It also works on raising awareness of the rights of the elderly in the wider society. A committee preparing the executive regulations for the law is looking into ways of guaranteeing the elderly their rights and benefits.

Other initiatives to assist the elderly have also been implemented, including “Life is Hope”. The Ministry of Social Solidarity also provides assistance to 522,000 elderly people through the Karama cash-support programme to a total of LE369 million annually.

The Nasser Social Bank offers the elderly a variety of banking services including Rad Al-Gamil (Paying it Forward) certificates that give the highest rate of return in the banking market, with one-year certificates paying 20.5 per cent monthly and 22 per cent annually. Three-year certificates pay 22.5 per cent monthly and 24.25 per cent annually. A total of 14,500 certificates have been issued to a total of approximately LE1.26 billion.

Other events are helping to include the elderly in joint activities with the younger generations like the Elderly-Young Marathon.

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IVING HAPPY YEARS: Golden Years is an NGO working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Social Solidarity that aims at changing ideas about the elderly in Egypt.

It started in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic as a Facebook group that provided services for the elderly like medical consultations, art classes, yoga sessions, and guided breathing exercises. It ended up organising more than 15 activities, both online and offline, like choirs composed of members of the group, marathons for both the elderly and the young, book clubs, and field trips to touristic sites. It aims at promoting healthy ageing in Egypt.

Founder of the Golden Years Foundation for Community Development Dina Hashish said the goal is “to build awareness about healthy ageing, including among younger people taking care of an ageing parent.” She said that raising the awareness of caregivers taking care of the elderly was an important goal.

A caregiver or family member must know how to take care of an elderly person no matter what condition they are in. They need to learn how to deal with such people, especially if they have medical issues.

Hashish said that the aim is to spread awareness of what it means to be an elderly person living in Egypt. Golden Years wants to make sure that there are opportunities for caring for the elderly and that these are intergenerational. Caregivers could be university students, for example, who volunteer to look after the elderly.

Other aims include spreading digital literacy among the elderly through training sessions in care homes. One of the main reasons behind the launch of the organisation was to end the isolation that some elderly people were living in during the Covid-19 virus pandemic, notably by helping them to develop digital literacy.

“We started in 2021 as a social-media platform named Golden Years Community, and during Covid the idea crystallised. Everyone was isolated around the world, but the segment that was sometimes 100 per cent left behind was elderly adults,” Hashish said.

 “If they were not up to date with technology they could be left behind. For instance, they could not do gym exercises online or online cooking or even online meet-ups like other people did during the pandemic. They were completely isolated.”

“We started to teach digital literacy so that elderly people would be less isolated, starting with Facebook where they could post messages and share their interests and then how to join meet-ups so that they could widen their social circle because as a person grows older his or her circle often becomes smaller.”

“At the same time, we also do a lot of work on integration, helping elderly people to become more involved in society so that they can access places that they might not do otherwise,” Hashish said. “We might investigate whether certain places are elderly friendly, for example, and if they are, we will give advice on how elderly people can access them.”

“We also organise the Al-Haraka Baraka or Walk the Walk rally, a manifestation of healthy ageing.”

“The rally was one of the largest events we organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Youth and Sports. We had thousands of people come and celebrate healthy ageing. People of all ages and from all walks of life came and celebrated with us,” she said.

“Today, we are trying to spread the importance of walking as a healthy activity that helps with things like blood circulation, mental health, and hormones that promote happiness. You are going to be a happier, healthier person if you take up walking. You are going to be less tense, less depressed, and less anxious,” Hashish said.

“This is where the idea of ‘Walk the Walk’ came from — to encourage the idea of healthy ageing and to have a manifestation of what Golden Years stands for.”

Hashish said that at first the main target was the elderly alone, but after a while it became the elderly and those who care for them, meaning the whole network that supports the elderly in Egypt.

“An elderly person is supported by several others. These could be their family or neighbours. They could be the porter, virtually anyone could be involved. What we are trying to do is to organise different interventions for different kinds of persons, even schoolchildren so that they have more empathy for the elder adults in their lives,” she said.

“When we go with Grade 2 students to visit a nursing home, we are not going just for a visit. We are teaching them through the visit how to deal with the elderly,” she added. The organisation also takes university students on such trips, constantly tailoring the message to each age group.

This intergenerational work is of great value, and “some of the students on one of the visits asked some of the elderly people for advice,” Hashish said. “They had a poster, and the older adults would dictate to them what to write on it. Then they put it up for the whole school year and called it ‘my grandpa’s and grandma’s advice,’” she said.

“We have a lot of activities related to raising awareness, including with doctors about healthy ageing. We have these sessions online and offline. We also have our own YouTube channel that has a lot of videos on it that we call the Wellness Series.”

Geriatricians, ophthalmologist, dentists, and osteopathic surgeons take part in the videos, talking about what it means to be old and how an older person can take care of himself. They also give caregivers advice on how to take care of the elderly and of themselves, so that they do not burn out and are confident that they are doing the best they can for their loved ones.

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CTIVITIES: “Another activity we have is the book club that takes place in collaboration with a book shop and is organised twice a month. The idea is to invite authors mostly over 60 who can talk about their life-journeys,” Hashish said.

They have also invited authors under 60 whose books talk about their relationships with an elderly person, like a grandparent or parent.

“The idea is to get seniors to go back to reading and to create a space where they can socialise and at the same time can get out of the house, socialise, and take part in intergenerational dialogue,” Hashish said.

Another activity is the choir. “The core of this is its senior members, both men and women over 60,” she said, adding that the oldest member of the choir today is 87 years old, and they want people in their 90s and even older to join the group.

There are a lot of positive aspects related to the choir that do not only have to do with music. One is when an elderly person is trying to sing and memorise the words of a song, this stimulates his cognitive abilities. It also strengthens the memory, giving positive feelings and generating a lot of happiness. This can end the loneliness and isolation that a lot of seniors feel.

“There is also the handicrafts bazaar. We encourage our seniors to make a lot of handmade products, and we use the bazaars for people to display them,” Hashish said.

Both elderly men and women take part. “People other than family members appreciate the handmade crafts that they make, because a lot of seniors make crocheted or knitted items that they gift to their grandchildren, and these may not realise how special these gifts are. When strangers actually buy their products and ask them how they made them and have a conversation, it really builds self-confidence and gives an opportunity to socialise.”

Preserving treasured belongings is important, and there are many events on how to protect the things that you treasure the most, whether old newspapers, old letters, invitations to people’s weddings who were dear to you, even an old wedding dress that might be cherished.

There are also events related to birthdays as well as activities like trips, walks, gatherings, virtual meet-ups, and a breakfast so that the elderly can meet together and discuss things of interest.

According to Hashish, the group has around 400 volunteers including schoolchildren, university students, and adults who are over 60. “Most are older adults, so it’s a very different story from most NGOs, where the people working on the ground are mostly youth to serve the community,” she said.

“In our case, it is older adults who are mostly volunteering, except when there are big events like the rally, where we would see a lot of young people volunteering,” Upcoming events are announced on the group’s social-media platforms.

The number of beneficiaries in the Facebook group and the care homes come to over 80,000 people. In the Facebook group alone there are 72,000 plus, Hashish said.

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LANS: Despite the group’s success, Hashish said there are still some barriers.

“I think one of the biggest barriers is stereotyping, where people might say ‘a senior cannot do that.’ We are trying to reverse this and are telling people that a senior can do anything that they set their heart on if they are physically able to. If they are not physically able to, let’s see how we can make it more accessible for them so that they can do it,” she said.

“From the caregiver’s side, these are usually younger in age and don’t want to see their parents labelled by the kind of disease they have. They shouldn’t be labelled as a stroke patient or an Alzheimer’s patient, for example, because that way they cannot enjoy life and they face one of the stigmas related to old age.”

“Those are the two main problems that we are fighting tooth and nail to change.”

Hashish herself is a corporate lawyer and was the first person in the Middle East to be recognised by the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing as one among 50 global leaders who are transforming the world to be a better place in which to grow older, according to the Golden Years Website.

Hashish said the recent law on the elderly has made an important contribution. “We are discussing the executive regulations of the new law. It is a fantastic step for encouraging healthy ageing among adults. There have been a lot of steps taken by the government to promote the idea of protecting the rights of the elderly,” she said.

One such step is the support the Ministry of Social Solidarity has given to events organised by Golden Years, and Hashish said the new law assists the elderly to engage more in life.

“The new law definitely is a step towards that,” she said, adding that she is a member of the Higher Council for the Elderly affiliated to the Ministry of Social Solidarity. “The new law is a major step in the right direction, so that we can better protect seniors and engage them in society in a more meaningful way,” she added.

“One example of the successes we have seen was when a senior came to the rally and was using a walker. He said that it was the first time he had been out of the house in four years other than a visit to his doctor. We succeeded in having him get out of his house for the event,” Hashish said.

“We also have a senior who always had a passion to teach others. She had always wanted to teach, but she had never found a real opportunity to do so. During Covid-19, we taught her through our digital inclusion sessions how to make videos of herself making handicrafts, and she filmed a series to teach others to crochet. She made products out of crochet and macramé and shared the videos with us. Now she teaches other elderly people how to make their own products.”

“We now want to expand our impact all across Egypt. We want to do more to spread the concept of healthy ageing across Egypt and the whole of the Middle East.” Hashish concluded.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly