March 22, 2007 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Groups that want to encourage older Americans to use their expertise to help solve social problems should unite to lobby federal, state, and local lawmakers to provide money and other incentives to promote such “civic engagement,” said speakers at a conference here this month.
“Many, many policy makers have not heard about civic engagement,” said Barbara Woodall, who served as a 2005-6 fellow for the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “And that’s why it’s so important for all of us to agitate in our spare time.”
Ms. Woodall spoke at a daylong session of the joint conference of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging which discussed the movement to mobilize the huge number of baby boomers who are nearing traditional retirement age, and other older Americans, to work for social causes. Her panel focused on how to persuade Congress and other legislative bodies that they should adopt policies to foster such activity.
“We don’t have a national strategy now for what to do as baby boomers age,” said Howard Bedlin, vice president for public policy and advocacy at the National Council on Aging.
Federal Aid
He and other people at the conference said a key priority is to persuade Congress to provide money to carry out provisions on civic engagement that it added last year when it extended the Older Americans Act for five years.
Those provisions, the first of their kind, instruct two federal agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services and the Corporation for National and Community Service — to develop a comprehensive approach for using older people to “address critical local needs of national concern,” including working for nonprofit organizations and government agencies.
The law also asks the federal government to award grants and contracts to organizations that create opportunities for older people to work on projects to meet “critical community needs,” for example to help grandparents who are raising children or families who have a child with a disability or chronic illness.
But Congress has not yet allocated the money to get those programs off the ground.
“Until there are appropriations, you can have all the mandates in the world but nothing happens,” Ms. Woodall said.
Jaia Peterson Lent, director of public policy and outreach at Generations United, a group in Washington that promotes cooperation among different age groups on social-policy issues, urged conference participants to sign a letter that her organization and several others have drafted to convince Congress to provide $9.9-million in the 2008 fiscal year for civic-engagement grants under the Older Americans Act.
“If strategically mobilized, older adults can fill gaps in areas such as education, health care, and family support,” the letter says. “The net result would be billions of tax dollars saved through wise forethought and planning.”
Opposition Expected
Mr. Bedlin said advocates of new spending face an uphill battle because the budget for the Older Americans Act, which pays for the Meals on Wheels nutritional program and other services to help older people stay independent, has remained stagnant in recent years.
Yet the law is not well known by members of Congress, the news media, or the general public. “If we’re going to be successful on appropriations, it’s going to require a group effort,” he said.
Other speakers described additional ways the federal and state governments could promote civic engagement.
Ayelet Hines, senior consultant at M+R Strategic Services, in Washington, described a campaign that has been started by a new group that she represents called Experience Wave, in Washington, which promotes legislation to make it easier for older adults to volunteer, continue working, or to start a second career.
The group, which receives money from Atlantic Philanthropies, in New York, wants the federal government to adopt policies such as a tax deduction for donations of time by older volunteers for nonprofit groups or government agencies and grant programs to help organizations develop “stateof-the-art” programs to manage and retain volunteers, as well as track the time they spend on projects.
Ms. Hines also described the group’s efforts to get state governments to take action, for example by allowing local governments to award property-tax breaks to volunteers, or creating programs to award credits to people who volunteer at organizations that help older people that they could then draw on when they themselves need help.
She said some states have shown interest. For example, in New York, lawmakers recently introduced legislation to help older people to continue working or to do volunteer work, she said. “It might prove easier to advocate policies at the state level initially,” she said.
