Age-friendly cities and communities: a manifesto for change

Chapter 14 present a 10 point ‘Manifesto for Change’, drawing upon arguments and perspectives developed by the contributors to this book. Despite the expansion of the WHO Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, the chapter argues, challenges remain in responding to the growth of inequality and the impact of economic austerity on policies targeted at older people. Given this context, it becomes especially important to develop a framework for action which strengthens commitment to the primary goal of making environments responsive to the diverse needs of people as they age. The aim of the manifesto is to sharpen debate in the age-friendly field as well as encourage new approaches amongst the various stakeholders, including urban planners, community developers, health and social care professionals, policy-makers, NGOs, voluntary workers, and not least, older people themselves.

Obtaining High-Quality Label by Distinguishing between Easy and Hard Items in Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing systems make it possible to hire voluntary workers to label large-scale data by offering them small monetary payments. Usually, the taskmaster requires to collect high-quality labels, while the quality of labels obtained from the crowd may not satisfy this requirement. In this paper, we study the problem of obtaining high-quality labels from the crowd and present an approach of learning the difficulty of items in crowdsourcing, in which we construct a small training set of items with estimated difficulty and then learn a model to predict the difficulty of future items. With the predicted difficulty, we can distinguish between easy and hard items to obtain high-quality labels. For easy items, the quality of their labels inferred from the crowd could be high enough to satisfy the requirement; while for hard items, the crowd could not provide high-quality labels, it is better to choose a more knowledgable crowd or employ specialized workers to label them. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach by learning to distinguish between easy and hard items can significantly improve the label quality.

Unemployable Workers? Comparing the Context and Contract in Voluntary Work and Regular Jobs

In welfare societies, disability pensions or incapacity benefits provide income security to people who, due to health problems or disability, are assessed as being unemployable. However, it is sometimes possible for people on disability pensions to work, for instance on a voluntary basis in and on behalf of associations of disabled people. This article applies perspectives on employability and discusses whether voluntary workers, like representatives of associations of disabled people, could have been employed in the ordinary labour market or whether there are definite characteristics of voluntary work which allow their capacity for work to be utilised.

On the Motives and Needs for Work beyond Age 65: Comparing Voluntary Workers versus Agency Workers

Much has been written about older workers, including how to adequately manage a more mature workforce. Currently, the bulk of research concentrates on the push-pull factors for early retirement vs. the continuation of work life until the pensionable age. This article focuses on a different and rarely investigated group and explicitly addresses an issue up to now overlooked: for those who continue work beyond the age at which full government pension benefits are available (i.e., post-retirement workers), is the meaning of work related to their employment status? To answer this question we compared the work motives of Dutch volunteers and agency workers aged 65 years (i.e., the official Dutch pensionable age) and older. Contrary to the presumptive prevailing common convictions, we found that for post-retirement agency workers financial motives or needs seem less important than personal motives, and the employment status itself is not a good indicator for decision-making on human resource practices. We conclude that for these ‘indisputable seniors' the satisfaction of esteem needs through work remains unremitting, and may even be increasingly important as time goes by.

Die liggaam-van-Christus-metafoor: instrument vir die effektiewe uitvoering van die missionale opdrag

The body-of-Christ-metaphor: instrument for the effective execution of the missional commission Practice suggests that many AFM pastors are possibly so busy with numerous tasks and responsibilities that they are unable to effectively mobilise their assembly members to actively partici- pate in voluntary acts of service (cf. Eph. 4:12). The conse- quence is that such assemblies are often unable to function effectively in the carrying out of the missional commission (according to Matt. 28:19). Pastors are unsuccessful in working more effectively through the mobilisation of their members as part-time voluntary workers in the carrying out of the missional commission, according to the advice Moses’ father-in-law gave him (cf. Ex. 18). The mobilisation of members takes place through the empower- ing of members to discover and develop their gifts and allowing their involvement in voluntary acts of service. The emphasis of this article lies in what Hendriks (2004:11) calls “congregational theology”. According to Hendriks (2004:25) congregational theology is a theology being practised by body-of-Christ-meta- phor assemblies (cf. Eph. 4:11-16). The metaphor of assem- blies choosing to function as the body-of-Christ where the importance of the voluntary acts of service of members is emphasised enjoys further development in this article.

Exile: Rupture and Continuity in Jean Vanmai's Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang

This essay focuses on the work of the New Caledonian-born writer Jean Vanmai. His first two novels, Chan Dang and Fils de Chan Dang, describe the working conditions and exilic existence of the little known Chan Dang, the voluntary workers from Tonkin (North Vietnam) who moved to New Caledonia many decades ago. Descended himself from a Chan Dang family, Vanmai wishes to preserve the memory of the Chan DangDang’s past. In writing the story of the Chan Dang, Vanmai sees himself as the guardian of the Chan Dang’s collective memory, a keeper and defender of their common past. The paper argues that Vanmai's depictions of the Chan Dang have two important effects. First, by sharing with other Vietnamese migrants/refugees the life and experiences of the Tonkinese voluntary workers in New Caledonia, Vanmai breaks the silence surrounding colonial exile and exploitation and provides a full account of the Chan Dang’s exile that can be integrated into the contemporary history of Vietnamese migration. Second, by using different narrative resolutions for each of his protagonists, Vanmai stresses the need to fulfil one’s filial duty among the young Vietnamese generations. With this symbolic filial act, Vanmai pays homage to his Vietnamese ancestors and earns himself a honourable title, that of a true dutiful "son of Chan Dang".