Aging & Social Change: Tenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

There is great concern in North American rural areas about aging communities. The worry is that the needs of elders (people who have reached retirement age and moved out of the full-time labor force) will outstrip the resources of communities with relatively too few younger adults. This scenario portrays elders through a deficit lens. But what if we instead look at what elders can bring to a community. Our research interviewed 40 elders who were leading various volunteer civic engagement activities. The results show that these elders are engaged in a wide variety of activist and service activities that build new community programs and develop community infrastructure. Elders are leaders in community innovation, provide stability and sustainability to what may otherwise be fleeting efforts, and bring a variety of professional skills to community development. Contrary to the narrative that elders are primarily a burden to communities, this research shows how much of a resource than can be. We include recommendations for how communities can most effectively engage the resources that elders can offer, especially in rural areas in North America.