International Longevity Centre Global Alliance - Designing the Future of Ageing

21st October 2017

On October 19 and 20, ILC-BR hosted the 5th International Longevity Forum in Rio de Janeiro. This year’s theme was the construction of resilience along the life course; a very timely topic given the ongoing crisis in Brazil.

Resilience can be taught and learnt across the life course – this is one of the take away messages of the 5th International Longevity Forum which brought together about 30 national and international speakers from various fields, ranging from architecture and arts, demography and nursing, to medicine and psychology. The discussions focussed on the multidimensionality of ageing from a life-course perspective and on how individual and community resilience can be developed – in the context of the most privileged circumstances and the most adverse context, such as care settings in poor communities.

International speakers were Dr. Ali Naghieh of Oxford University; Gabrielle Kelly of the Resilience and Wellbeing Centre of South Australia; the German architect Matthias Hollwich, author of “New Aging”, Jos de Blok, founder of Buurtzorg; Prof. Dr. Karen Glaser of King’s College London and Prof. Dr. Volker Deville of the Berlin Demography Forum. Perspectives from Spain and Argentina were added through the participation of Dr. Daniel Prieto, Dr. Silvia Gascon and Dr. Ricardo Iacub. The representative of the GA at the UN in Geneva, Silvia Perel-Levin also participated discussing the role of human rights and presenting on the Theatre of the Oppressed.

As every year, the Forum was held in the auditorium of Bradesco Seguros, one of Brazil’s biggest insurance company. Further support for the Forum was provided by Universeg, TENA, MSD Pharmaceuticals, Health Holland, Iamspe and the Brazilian Society for Geriatrics and Gerontology (SBGG).

Contact: Ina Voelcker, ina.voelcker@ilcbrazil.org

Picture: audience of the Forum (Photo credit: Marcos Pinto)