The Truth About Volunteers Nobody Tells You

speaker-1 (00:06.67)
Welcome folks. Today we have Diana Shoemaker of the Elders Action Network with us. She’s down in Florida, family surviving the storm going on up north. So I thought now would be a good time to have this conversation. Diana, it always sounds better if it comes from the person I’m talking to. So why don’t you tell me a bit about who you are and the Elders Action Network.

speaker-0 (00:33.794)
Sure, sure. Happy to be here, Neil. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, Diana Shoemaker. I’m the executive director of Elders Action Network. We are a national organization, U.S., and we serve elders throughout the country who are interested in using their time, talent, resources, treasure to have a positive impact on some of the critical issues that we’re facing in our country today.

We consider it a network because we’re located all over the United States. We work locally, regionally, and from a national perspective as well.

speaker-1 (01:14.222)
How many members do you guys have?

speaker-0 (01:16.93)
Well, our database is close to 40,000 individuals and those represent people who have come into our organization and taken potentially taken some kind of action. We’ve got three segments of our organization and the first one is the first one that we offer is an educational segment. That’s where we do a lot of programming to help elders become the activists that they’re seeking to be or explore the

the transition into activism. It’s called Elders Rising. And then we have two other elements of our organization. One is the Elders for Sound Democracy. And these are elders who come together to look at some of the issues around democracy, how to sustain, keep our democracy healthy. And the third element is the Elders for Climate Action. And that’s the group that is obviously concerned with climate change. it is the largest

part of our organization in terms of the action teams. And so we have had for 10 years now, individuals showing up to sign petitions or send letters to their representatives on behalf of the issues that we’re dealing with in the climate, eldest climate action. So that those numbers represent people who have come into the organization in various ways and certainly have taken some kind of action.

speaker-1 (02:38.894)
So you said the first one you said was elders rising and that’s introducing them into activism and that sort of thing.

speaker-0 (02:41.963)
Elders rising, yeah.

speaker-0 (02:46.754)
That’s the purpose of that part of the organization. We found that activism is, and people coming into that, for some it’s new, something that they haven’t done. For others, they have done it all their life. But that pathway in sometimes encourages conversation, community building, some tools, activist tools. For example, one of our programs was called Resistance Through Writing.

And it was led by another elder in our organization who was encouraging and giving some tidbits on how to write letters to the editor in local, you know, in the small local papers in response to some of the issues that these individuals were concerned about. And so it was an opportunity for people to come together virtually to talk about it, to get some skills, some tips, I some tools, and then go into their communities and write these letters. And as a matter of fact, we had

probably eight of those individuals letters were picked up in their local papers. So the activist tool helping people get the skills they need for this. We also offer pilot projects or we start a new project there and then grow it. have, and I’d like to talk a little bit about that part of our organization. Cause I think that really represents sort of the diversity of elders that are coming into our organization. Some are well-prepared to do activism.

they did in the sixties and they’re ready to get back into and or have never stopped. And others are new to it. Maybe they’re just recently retired and they know that they want to do more with their lives beyond the work phase of their life. And so it’s a great place for people to come in and to learn about the issues, to think about what it means to be an elder and an active elder in the sense of activism, to explore those elements of becoming an elder.

moving from someone who is retired to an elder, meaning someone who gives to, our particular situation, giving because we see the importance for future generations. This isn’t just about what we need, but this is what our future generations need to live safely, happily, healthily.

speaker-1 (05:05.198)
So, this isn’t so much that that component of your group isn’t so much about a specific cause as much as it is teaching people how to have a cause.

speaker-0 (05:19.074)
In a sense, yes, yes, or yes, to actually question what might be really important to them, or maybe they do have something, but they’re not sure how to enter into that work. And maybe there, for a lot of people, it is somewhat of an isolating experience after they’ve left their community of work. And how do I find people who are seeking the same sort of things that I’m seeking, which is finding meaning and purpose?

beyond the work situation. So we hope we offer a place where people can land to do that kind of exploration. That’s the purpose and the hope of Elders Rising. And we’re doing this together. That’s why Elders Rising is a great term for it, because we really are doing this together. And that’s where the difference happens as a result of the work that we do together in this effort.

speaker-1 (06:10.764)
And then the two common areas that are probably high on mind for everybody that you’re dealing with happen to be democracy and climate change.

speaker-0 (06:20.888)
Correct, correct, yes, those are two areas that we have. Part of that is for a number of years, there’s been a building of the team around climate because it’s such an important issue. And so they’re really well established and the elders for sound democracy has really risen in the last couple of years. Obviously we’ve got years of voting, the years that special elections are coming up or we’re always in elections actually. So helping people to

Find access to voting make sure that we’re not suppressing, know that worth keeping the suppression of voting, you know out of And allowing people to continue to have voice Really and the issues around that for example We have in our eldest or sound democracy speakers speakers series of democracy forum speaker series where we bring some key individuals in into the

into the conversation with us. Robert Hubble, who has a Substack recently, was with us. Joyce Vance has been with us. And people who are doing the work right now and encouragement. A lot of this is about encouraging. You’re not alone. These are the kinds of things that you can be working on educating us around the issues as well. So we always consider education an important part of the work that we’re doing in order to be able to be effective is to understand the full breadth of the issues that we’re dealing with.

and then be well versed so that when we go into the community and address it, we’re speaking about the, you know, the not with knowledge about the issue.

speaker-1 (07:55.214)
It’s interesting. I look at a lot of the senior politicians in the United States and a lot of them are in that elder phase. your group, do you find a lot of them end up moving beyond the activism more into actually trying to get elected?

speaker-0 (08:05.198)
Right, right.

speaker-0 (08:16.686)
I haven’t really, we haven’t really traced that or followed that. But that would be a good question, how much actually, but that is ultimately a potential part of it. As a matter of fact, just as an aside, in part because of the work that I’ve done in my local community, two years ago, I ran a local campaign for a county commission position. I didn’t win it, but sure gave me lots of experience. And it was also an opportunity to

take the moment to, I think, represent voices that were not being heard. And that was really what drove me to do it. as a side, saw myself having enough, to the point of having enough experience and be in the community long enough to say, think I can represent well. So, certainly encourage people to consider doing that. when it’s, if that’s, this is the time of life where we can begin to do that to your point is really what I’m agreeing with.

speaker-1 (09:15.374)
So you’re seeing the common areas being the democracy and the climate. I’m starting to see a

The reason for this podcast is because there is a great lack of view of thought about retirement, retirement age, aging, elders.

speaker-1 (09:41.044)
And the way people are starting to talk about the area is starting to change. I’m wondering whether there’s an activism area for just pushing the agenda of elders and aging.

speaker-0 (09:55.522)
There is the potential great for that obviously. mean, that’s it’s 80 million plus represents a pretty in the United States represents a huge voting block, a huge spending block. They are to be paid attention to because of just for that reason. And we’re also influencing decisions because of where if we’re in the arena of activism, we’re going to have impact. I think it’s a slow go. I think it’s, you know, it’s not

it’s not necessarily been a respected, our country has not respected the elders the way other traditions have. And I think that is a little bit of what Elders Action Network brings to this conversation. We do honor the elder as a valuable, wise component of our world. And that’s exactly part of the history of Elders Action Network about 2014.

a number of elders came together following a journey that our founder had been on in terms of his own exploration. He left a corporate experience done with his work and knew that there was more, the world was struggling. There was lots of issues to deal with and he wasn’t ready to stop working on those issues. so he went through his own kind of journey and that included retreats and sort of spiritual kind of

exploration and not necessarily religious, but you know, sort of the sacred experience and brought that into this conversation with 40 other elders in 2014. And they decided that they were conscious elders who had a commitment to future generations and that that mattered in the work that they did moving forward. And Elders Action Network was born out of that.

interaction and that that conversation so that sacred activism piece again Not so much from a religious perspective from the sacredness of aging and wisdom Elders Action Network has that has its sort of roots in that as well

speaker-1 (12:04.686)
Part of what one of the pillars that the transition network focuses on is retirement and volunteer, which is where this comes into very nicely. Not everybody wants to start a business. They want to be active and they want to be focused.

speaker-0 (12:24.398)
Yeah, we are all volunteer based. mean, we have a very small staff. We have four staff members to serve a very large number of elders. However, those elders are also participatory in the leadership of the organization. have for elders rising component, we have an elders rising advisory council made up of the program leaders, people who are running and overseeing ongoing programs to advise and to

coordinate programs together to look at how we can connect things together. We’ve got a book study group that’s working with another, with one of our action teams to develop potentially books that will educate around the issues of democracy and vice versa. So it’s that collaboration. So we have elders doing that. We’ve had elders obviously serving on our board. Our board is made up of all volunteers. So it’s really essential that we have that voice in the creation of programs. And we’re open to,

as we see the need and an elder steps forward with something. Recently, we added a program called Exploring Elderhood. One of our elders understood the importance of explaining elders action network as both the sort of inner and outer work that we’re doing and then connecting people with our organization. So that’s a way for people to explore their process into elderhood. And so we see the necessity to do that plus the actual get out.

And I say get out and into the communities with activism. But I don’t necessarily mean we’re protesting. A lot of our elders are not particularly interested in doing that kind of work. But they might be, they’re very much interested in having voice. And that may, like I said, do petitions or they’re working on letters or they’re doing postcards to remind other people to vote. So there’s lots of ways for people to get involved.

speaker-1 (14:16.558)
You said you guys were founded in 2014. So you’re 12 years later and you’re at 40,000 members. That’s quite a growth in that amount of time. With the population age, you’re still seeing that type of growth?

speaker-0 (14:35.598)
I think this is a year where I think things are a little bit shaky for a lot of people. So I think that, you know, just because of the things that going on in the world and there’s a lot of need, but there’s also a lot of individuals who may not be as active. think people are stuck. think a lot of this is sometimes people get stuck in the over overwhelmingly of what’s going on in our world. yeah, mean, people are still coming to us. The exponential growth.

is going to happen when, as people find us and say, yes, I can make a difference. So I think it’s a both end. I mean, I think we see people reacting and coming to us, and we also people feeling overwhelmed. And I really that raise that because one of the organizations we work with partner with, we’re doing a joint program with them that talks about the fear and the anxiety and the issues. And this is, again, we’re talking about the United States and some of the things that are going on here.

that we get stuck and what do we do about that? And so we want to reassure people they’re not alone in that struggle of to what to do when it seems so overwhelming. So I think we recognize, we’re trying to recognize the reality of our participants and what they may be going through as opposed to here, go out and do work, go out and do work. You may be on a pathway and you’re feeling a little out of sorts about

where you belong. We want to hold that journey, ultimately, as an organization. At least that’s my vision for what we can do is hold people wherever they are.

speaker-1 (16:14.712)
So when they come in, first start or join your group.

How do you ease them in or do you? Do they come in already knowing what they want to do or is it I want to volunteer but I don’t know next steps? How do you help them?

speaker-0 (16:31.17)
It’s a good question. Yeah. Well, think it’s a, a part of it is exploring with the individual where they are in their journey. Some people just find us and immediately join the sound democracy team or attend a program with the sound democracy or participate in a monthly call that’s offered by the elders for for elders climate action. And so that’s an easy one. You know, they found something that they can do. I would say that there are others who

to your point, are trying to find their way into it. And I think that’s where some of the programs that we all offer in Elders Rising work for individuals like that, because they can gently come into a conversation. For example, the book study group is a great place for someone who’s new to the organization to join a community that they meet with every week or every other week to discuss a book for six weeks. And now they’ve found a community, ultimately, that they can

you know, share their thoughts with. They may then decide from there that there’s more work they want to do either in the organization or in their community. And we encourage people to go back into your community and do work there. I’ll give you another example. There’s a woman who was in our organization who had helped organize a team working on the issues

around conversations, having difficult conversations. Again, United States, lot of divide, we’re seeing people having trouble talking to their neighbors. She and her team started doing programs around improving abilities to have conversations, difficult conversations. So some tools to be learned there. That work then kind of became something that the organization as a whole

begins to embrace. understand that to be activists that having those difficult conversations are important. In that work, she took it into her local community. She did the work of these conversations in her community. And from there, she built a relationship with others in our community and has begun as very active now in working with the issues of immigration in her community. So she took what she was doing with us, helped us, gave us some very important skills and awareness.

speaker-0 (18:54.028)
and then went into her community, practiced it, and then began to grow other opportunities in her community. That’s a win. That’s a win for her. It’s a win for her community. It’s a win for our organization that we helped provide, and she provided to us those tools. And it’s a shared giving. really is a shared giving.

speaker-1 (19:14.894)
How old are the people when they normally come to you? The reason why I asked this is a number of my guests have all indicated that there’s a period after people retired that is vacation. And then they get to that point where it’s like, okay, what do I do now? And they try and figure out things. So there’s a short period after people are retired, but

I hesitate to group anybody that’s 65 plus into the same group because everybody has different focuses.

speaker-0 (19:53.922)
Right, well, and to your point, when we did our recent look at our organization, sort of a study of the niche that we serve, we understood the importance of expanding that niche, you know, serves to 55 and up, because that’s, to your point, that’s exactly where some of that exploration happens. I would say that the individuals that are actively involved in our organization that have been there for a number of years,

probably came in at that point and now in their 60s and 70s. And we have people in their 80s as well working with us, very much so. Huge leaders of our organization that are in their 80s. So we understand that there are other phases. I would say that climate work and democracy work, people can join us at any point in the journey. think that Elders Rising,

begins and part of the reason for Elders Rising again was to design it so that people in 55, 60 who are to your point, just exploring can find some ways in. And I think that’s how we’ve hopefully designed and will design our programs to continue to do that. I get people coming to me and saying, I’m not fully retired yet, but I know that I want to do more. That’s a lot of sometimes, and those are people who are in their 50s.

you know, 50, 60, know, like 50s, 60s or seven early seventies. And that’s, that’s the group where I think the community, the establishing a community becomes the first step coming in and finding like minded people, people who are in the same situation is hugely important. And I, and I hope that that’s what we provide for people is like, I found my, we would call our tribe. I found my tribe. I found my people. That’s what I get off. And part of that also is

If you are in a community that isn’t necessarily having the same voice as you and doesn’t support maybe the way you’re thinking about democracy and climate issues, you may find it at Elders Action Network because you found people who are doing the work that you ultimately believe needs to be done.

speaker-1 (22:02.894)
So that begs the question. Like whenever I hear activism, I think more left wing. But you just said, one of my first thoughts when we first started talking is typically as you age, you shift to a more conservative type of thinking. Not necessarily all the way to the right wing type thing, but you become set in your ways. You don’t like change as much as you would have when you were 20.

Do you see a political stripe to your activism?

speaker-0 (22:38.126)
Well, I’ll say that we are a nonpartisan organization. Just to be clear.

speaker-1 (22:43.744)
And I don’t care what the politics are. I’m just curious.

speaker-0 (22:50.614)
Yeah, no, we are nonpartisan. I think you will find people who are working on issues that are like climate. I crosses all kinds of, you know, divides, because it’s if you’re worried about the world and climate and the earth, then it shouldn’t matter. And it’s not something we’re bringing to people in terms of a partisan from a partisan perspective. yeah, and I think

You know, you said more conservative. don’t know if that’s necessarily true. It may just be that people have perspectives that are, I think perspectives are, are formulated and people are willing to stretch in those in ways that maybe they haven’t been asked to stretch, you know, to take action, to do things that they may be. I think that’s more of it’s not so much conservative or, you know, progressive. It’s that.

I’m willing to take action that I haven’t taken before. I’m willing to consider something that I haven’t. And that’s where the stretch comes, you know, to make that phone call, to work in a phone bank, to meet with other people in your community around an issue. I think that’s where the growth really, really happens for people. At least that’s what we want to encourage at Elder’s Action Now.

speaker-1 (24:11.468)
having conversations with others allows us to open our minds to new possibilities, that sort of thing.

speaker-0 (24:18.454)
Absolutely, absolutely. think about the kinds of we’re having if we’re in a, and the good news is that we have these dialogues that we do virtual, everything’s virtual, by the way. We’re completely virtual. My staff is virtual. We’re not in any, located in one place. And so we have the opportunity to use the tool of Zoom webinars, those kinds of things to interact with people. And in some ways it’s a very safe way to do it because you,

don’t have to leave them in the comfort of your home. And you get to talk to people that may inspire you and change your thinking and encourage you to do something that you haven’t done before. So if we’re doing it right, we’re getting people to do things maybe that they have always wanted to do, but they never had the opportunity or the community to do it with, the sort of the tools to do that work. So hopefully that’s what we’re offering people is ways to be involved that they, is enough.

you know, it’s enough for them to send postcards or to gather with other people in their community to write postcards. don’t like I said earlier, they don’t need to necessarily be out there protesting and on the streets. There are groups that do that. And you know, that’s if that’s the kind of work that an elder wants to do, by all means, there are organizations to do that. You won’t find us necessarily as an organization doing that level of activism or in that way, I should say not level but in that way.

speaker-1 (25:44.366)
Yeah, it’s interesting because one of the things that commonly come up is that when we retire, we lose our friend group. We lose all the contacts that we used to have because everything was associated with work. And when we leave, all of sudden that’s gone. So this, when you start talking about creating a community or being part of a community, you’re reestablishing social context.

speaker-0 (26:12.11)
100%. Yeah, absolutely. And we know that isolation and social distance is something that we’ve been fighting for, fighting or overcoming or dealing with for a lot of years now as a result of COVID. And it’s not getting better. We’re not finding people less isolated and less depressed and alone. We’re not finding that. We’re finding that continuing to exist. And so if we can in some small way provide that connection, then

then we’re doing our work beyond just activism. We’re building community and that’s what it’s all about. I mean, it’s all about community. That first, 2014, that was a community that came together and immediately established themselves as an entity, a network at that moment. And we’ve been doing that ever since. It’s sometimes hard to do virtually, because you get these relationships and you can’t get beyond the screen. But I think it satisfies a lot of people to know that what we are,

doing and continue to expand is our work in communities. have in our climate group, have a couple elders climate action chapters, one real active in Massachusetts and one in California. These are places where people are actually physically, for the most part, getting together and working on a local or state issue around us. And we’re developing those in other areas. We’ve got one in

developing teams in Arizona and some other areas. So that is the next phase of our organization. Development will be to kind of establish those chapters for what we’re calling, for elders to obviously to come together and work on either one issue that they all agree on or maybe two issues and a number of people agree on those. And so, it’s a way to get really into the community and do the work locally.

speaker-1 (28:08.97)
Is there a trigger point for an organization when you get to the size you are? Because you’re not a small organization, but you’re not also the rotary, which is 1.2 million. So there comes to be a point where all of a you have to change the way you think about how your organization runs. You’re now starting to talk about chapters. Is that something that’s starting to happen with you?

speaker-0 (28:37.166)
Yeah, I think it’s in part by the chapters as we’re changing this networking part of it because the chapters themselves have begun to see beyond one issue. that within themselves, they’re seeing that there’s more than just one thing they want to work on. Maybe it’s climate and democracy. And so there may be some change is happening. So to be honest, it’s sort of the morphing of this idea that we started.

that has been going on for a little while already. so we’re getting ready to sort of think about this next phase. so to, again, the trigger point is that people want to be more active than just online. They want to go take it back into their communities. And if we’re doing it right, they’re going back into their communities. So if we just stay in our virtual world, we’re not going to make a difference. But if we go into our community and take what we’ve learned into the community, now we’ve expanded it.

And it’s gonna look interesting in the next couple of years is how do we build a communication system that works across the nation for these chapters? How do we structure them so that they’re supported by a national organization? Any organization that goes into this, I’m sure, Roger Reed, when they first started, had all these affiliates and they had to greet the national or the national had to greet the affiliates. It’s a process of organizational development that we’re actually literally in right now.

in discussing how do we do that? And how do we do it effectively? Because we want people to stay connected to the national organization because we have things to offer, but we want them to also do the work locally. yeah, it is literally the next phase of the organization that we’re exploring right now.

speaker-1 (30:17.034)
And that goes to definition of community. Because you’ve interchanged the term a few times, community as in your local neighborhood versus virtual group of community that’s focused on an issue as opposed to a region.

speaker-0 (30:35.95)
Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, it does. It’s the idea that we’re doing work together, whether we’re together physically, or whether we’re together virtually, or whether we’re together in a large organization. It’s really about, and you’ll see in our mission, it was the belief, and this was all the 2014, the idea that the elders were such an important element of our society that they could be part of a movement to make change. And that’s,

that’s gonna be movement as the large base as well as in these smaller communities, in units that can make a difference and move things forward basically in the way that sustains the future generations. And that’s important. The intergenerational piece of it is continuing to be a growing element of the organization. Obviously intergenerational is why we’re doing it for the future generation. So we are intergenerational from that perspective.

but doing work with the youth and middle-aged individuals is a part. We have a fun program that is launching basically in pilot called Future Design. And it’s on our website, all this, and it’s taking a tool that process that the Japanese have used to, we’ve introduced it in the United States and communities again, and groups to explore.

future issues or issues for the future. So we look at something maybe 20 years from now or in Japan, it’s 50 years they look at ahead and there’s a process that the team goes through and we’ve done it with elders and younger people as well so that we have the input from both generations, all generations basically. And how to tackle issues, not just here and now, but tackling with the spot of where we want to be in those 20 years from now.

where do we think we need to be? So it really pushes people to look outside. So the intergenerational piece, our climate group also has a month in June where it really focuses on the intergenerational aspect and the work in climate and with Elders Action Network and Elders Climate Action as well. So can’t forget that we’re doing this together for the future, for their future and for all the future.

speaker-1 (32:56.878)
That approach of taking something from Japan in to me is really interesting. We have another pillar, global retirement perspectives, where I want to be able to bring in thoughts and approaches from other societies, other cultures into and expose them to North Americans because we tend to be very myopic. We think this is the way it is.

speaker-0 (33:25.134)
This is what exactly

speaker-1 (33:26.466)
But different cultures have different ways of doing things.

speaker-0 (33:29.07)
Yeah, no, it’s really, we have on our website, we have a banner that says in the news and that article, there’s an article about future design in there. also have on our website, we have a place where you can find information about the program. So yeah, it’s a great thing to explore because it could, know, something that could help a community. They’re taking their issues in their community and we’re doing this process with a community basically. And I say community like that small,

small town that brings all their leaders together and they want to talk about this issue. And they come up with new insights that they did together, which is really exciting, really exciting.

speaker-1 (34:08.14)
How did you come upon the Japanese approach?

speaker-0 (34:13.038)
was, it was introduced to us by one of our volunteers. I, know, I, be honest with you, I don’t know exactly how we determined it, but, it became, it became something that became.

speaker-1 (34:24.717)
Because of all the various people in the group, get a lot of different views on things and all of it gets introduced and it just…

speaker-0 (34:32.429)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Somebody brought this concept to us and they shared it with other volunteers in our organization. And then it just blossomed. And they got excited and then, yeah, and very often some of these things happen in a community. Like I say, community. These are people that may have lived sort of in the same area. So they got to use it in their community and doing that work. And then they’re sharing with a larger organization. yeah, we’re really…

One of the other new projects that we’re offering is an incubator project, Elders Leadership Incubator. And it’s for elders who are interested in taking their passion or their interest and growing it. Basically, it’s an opportunity for people to incubate these ideas, social entrepreneurs, really to take it to the next level. And we’re offering that because we know people want to take these ideas they have and grow them. And we want to be a place where that can be done.

It’s no loss to us, it’s a gain to us. If you create a project or program that helps more and the generations to come, we all win. So we’re trying to be, again, activism tools in the here and now, maybe in the future development of projects. think Elders Rising is really a place where we can offer all of that of thinking and experience. least that’s the goal we’ve set for that particular project.

segment of our organization.

speaker-1 (35:58.638)
Do you see an area where it’s starting to rise? A specific topic. So you’ve got the democracy group. You’ve got the climate action group. But do you see another subject area that’s starting to rise in popularity? Just curious.

speaker-0 (36:15.584)
Yeah, no, I think we have actually, we’ve actually kind of gone the other way. We’ve had other segments of the organization that focused on the larger issue of social justice, which is such a big issue. And we’ve had a group that is particularly interested in regent of living and the idea of regent of living. I would say that both of those other areas have influenced Elders Rising because we found that rather than

focusing on a topical area or an issue, it was influencing how we do our work as activists. So I think that what will happen potentially is to your point, is that while we’re doing this exploratory work as elders, elders rising, we’re exploring who we are and what’s important, it could very well happen that we get a group of elders who are particularly interested in another

aspect of change and that there’s enough momentum to grow that. And that’s what it’ll take. It’ll take a group coming together, doing the work together and saying, think Elder’s Network is a place where we can land this particular action effort and let’s do that. So it isn’t bubbled up yet, but there’s nothing to say that it won’t. And I think we’ve set the organization up or trying to set it up in such a way that

allows for that, you know, with these other two teams that have developed, we would know it would, and it would take lead. And because it’s elder leaders that do it, it would be elders who step forward and say, yeah, I think this, we all want to work on this and we want to build this as a national effort in the organization. We got only four staff people. So we don’t want to rush it at this point to develop that because there’s only so much we can do and we want to do it well, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future or couldn’t happen in the future.

speaker-1 (38:15.864)
So let me rephrase what I just heard. It sounds like groups are external to Elders Action Network that come into Elders Action Network.

speaker-0 (38:25.262)
No, no, these were these were other groups that were already in or elders action network They were they were teams that people that were doing work and are doing still doing work and but but we’ve we’ve clarified that there is Teamwork that looks action oriented and it’s elders for sound democracy. We have the we have the momentum there the movement is there and these other groups have do the beautiful work of

providing us the education and the opportunity to think about ourselves as elders, which I think influences then the issues and the way in which we approach the issues. And it’s a transforming organization. mean, any network is going to be one that moves and shifts as the network develops. And I think that’s just an example of how we are.

constantly evolving to address.

speaker-1 (39:27.744)
You have your through line and how you act on that will adjust over time because

speaker-0 (39:34.734)
It could very well. could very well. Well, you right now, these are the ones that we’re mostly focused on, and they’re very timely, for sure. And take and there’s a lot we can do within those, for sure, at this point. Yeah.

speaker-1 (39:48.066)
Okay, so…

Normally around this time in the interviews, I always ask the people I’m talking with, what would your number one piece of advice be for people that want to join or want to get involved or want to be active? What would your first piece of advice be? Or maybe you have a couple that you would that are common that you give to people.

speaker-0 (40:19.694)
I think that an individual will know when they’re ready to get involved. And when they are, it doesn’t matter what level you are. You don’t have to be an expert in activism. You don’t have to ever have done it before to join our organization, because this is an exploratory experience for all of us. We’re all figuring this out together. So not to hesitate that you don’t think there’s something

valuable you can add to this journey. And, and start with talking to others about it and learning about whatever it is, you know, that that you seek to know more about. We’re welcoming, you know, we welcome people at any phase in their development of this area of their and, I think we learn from people at all stages of activism or exploring activism. And so we want that we want that knowledge to be shared. want to know what it is that you’re

Struggling with or what tools you need to do it. That’s the way we can serve better this particular area of interest for elders So yeah, don’t wait join us, know pop in to a program sit in on a call Nothing’s expected of you and you can give as much as you want or you can just be part of a of the team and in the sense of listening and learning and and Hopefully taking some action

speaker-1 (41:46.392)
could start small and then grow to the level that you want to be at.

speaker-0 (41:50.964)
Absolutely, absolutely. And please, you know, go for it. You know, there is such wisdom that our elders bring. There is such experience that our elders bring to this world. And we are a place where we want to enhance that, to provide room for it and to help it, all that wisdom be used to keep our world safe and healthy for, again, future generations.

speaker-1 (42:18.926)
Perfect. Diana, thank you very much. You’re welcome. For everybody that’s been watching this, I will put the links to the Elders Action Network in the description of the video. Feel free to reach out to Diana or any of her crew there. Remember, there’s only four right now, but you’re talking

speaker-0 (42:37.88)
Contact me. contact me. Info at eldersaction.org is a great place to reach me or Diana S at Elders Action Network and you can reach me directly.

Okay. Thanks for having me.