Voice and Agency
Around the world, older people are too often excluded from the decisions that shape their lives.
Decisions that impact older people are often made without their input due to ageist beliefs and stereotypes. Older people can be wrongly viewed as passive recipients rather than active members of their communities. Decisions are routinely made about older people without meaningfully engaging with them.
In humanitarian response, development, and community-based services, older people’s perspectives are frequently overlooked, creating a persistent gap between what older people need and what systems deliver. This exclusion reinforces ageism, widens inequities, and leads to programs and policies that overlook the realities older people face — from accessing health and social services to navigating crises and emergencies. As a result, communities lose the insight and leadership of a growing population that has so much to contribute, even as the global population ages faster than ever.
Ensuring that older people’s voices are central to the decisions that affect them is essential. Without meaningful participation, systems risk being underprepared for an aging world and missing the powerful solutions that older people can offer.
Learn More
HelpAge Voice Framework: An Introduction
Explore our Voice framework, which guides action and illustrates the range of activities from the HelpAge global network to strengthen older people’s voices.
Intergenerational Guide
Learn about intergenerational approaches to address issues facing older and younger people and how older people are leading change in their communities.
Are Older People Being Heard?
Read how actors working with older people can address both the challenges
and opportunities following the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure older people are included.
Older People's Associations (OPAs) in Asia
Check out a research assessment of the OPA model in four countries in Asia.
Global Impact: Older People's Associations (OPAs)
HelpAge USA is part of the HelpAge global network, comprised of over 200 organizations across 99 countries. For more than 30 years, HelpAge has pioneered and refined the Older People’s Association (OPA) model, ensuring that it responds to the needs, rights, and aspirations of older people.
OPAs are community-based groups run by older people, for older people, designed to:
• Provide a platform for older people to exercise their voice, raise awareness, and advocate for their rights
• Provide information, education, and community-based services to older people and others
• Nurture connection and provide social support
There are currently more than one million OPAs globally.
Voice Work: Ensuring Older People's Voices Are Heard
Older people have the right to be heard. Through our Voice work, we ensure older people can influence decision-making, participate in policy discussions, and advocate for inclusive societies that value every generation.
Local Innovations: Friendship Bench DC
We empower older people to lead Friendship Bench DC, a community-based mental health program by HelpAge USA adapted from Zimbabwe. Through this program, trained older people provide empathetic listening and problem-solving support, creating safe, confidential spaces for people of all ages to discuss their challenges and build resilience.
Stories and Campaigns
#OlderNotOver
#OlderNotOver is a three-year campaign to champion a fuller, more authentic portrayal of what life really looks like after 60, in the U.S. and around the world.
60 Over 60
Celebrating the achievements of older people around the world, our 60 Over 60 initiative highlights leaders who are creating positive change in their communities.
