So that the longer life given to us by elders may be defended, loved and peaceful
La Great Age Foundation aims to promote and guarantee the rights of the elderly person and the related duties of the community. Within this horizon that places the person, with his or her needs and frailties, at the center of thinking about the elderly, the Foundation intends to creatively and intelligently promote new and wiser policies in favor of the elderly, in the areas of work, culture and education, public health, economic protection, active aging and social inclusion.
In this sense, it also promotes the research and enhancement of initiatives aimed at improving the condition of the over-65s by promoting their development and activating all kinds of counteracting discrimination, marginalization, loneliness and social isolation, aware of the need for a defense of the permanence of those who are ahead in years at their homes, the place of their history and identity.
La Great Age Foundation is inspired by Christian and Gospel values: protection, therefore, of the person, particularly the poorer ones, placing the elderly, because of their frailty, limitations of body and mind, in that context of weakness and need.
With the awareness that the protection of rights and health cannot be limited to the individual sphere but invests the collective one, the Foundation promotes in every useful form all cultural, political, legal and scientific initiatives aimed at protecting and safeguarding the elderly in communities of all ranks, with particular regard to suburbs, isolated and poor communities and countries with limited resources.
Since the protection of the elderly person cannot be separated from the environmental context in which he or she lives, the EG Foundation promotes the protection of the environment, contexts and nature in which the elderly person lives and is embedded.
Pope Francis reiterated several times that “the elderly are the present and the tomorrow of the Church,” proposing to boldly encourage grandparents to dream: not only to rekindle hope in them, but also to give the younger generations the lifeblood, which flows from the dreams of the elderly, irreplaceable vehicles of memory to wisely direct the future.
It is only thanks to the elderly that the young can rediscover their roots, and it is only thanks to the young that the elderly recover the ability to dream. “This intergenerational sharing obliges us to change our gaze toward the elderly, to learn to look to the future together with them.”.
The EG Foundation will be vigilant in pointing to this cultural shift as the most authentic way to witness the “blessing of longevity,” time in our existence given to us to leave the world better than we found it.