The Later Life Podcast
A Greater Life in Later Life. That's what this podcast is about. The Later Life Podcast talks to the people and digs into the topics that help over-60s get the most out of the years ahead: health, money, learning, travel, family, and the passions that motivate us most. It's practical and warm but never patronising. Come for the advice and stay for the stories.
The Later Life Podcast
What Have Older Students Ever Done for Us?
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What Have Older Students Ever Done for Us?
With Dr Christine O’Kelly, Age-Friendly University at Dublin City University
What role can older students play in shaping our universities, workplaces and wider society?
In the first episode of The Later Life Podcast, Dr Christine O’Kelly joins us to explore the remarkable growth of lifelong learning and the contribution older people make to education and intergenerational life.
Fresh from the 50th anniversary celebrations of the University of the Third Age at the University of Wrocław, Christine reflects on five decades of active ageing and educational engagement. She also discusses the proposed Declaration of Rights for Older People and looks ahead to Dublin City University’s upcoming meeting of the European Federation of Older Students, hosted alongside the Generations at Work Conference.
It’s a conversation about learning without age limits – and why universities and workplaces thrive when every generation has a place in them.
Hello and welcome to the Later Life podcast, brought to you by Spry Finance, in which we look at the many and varied aspects of living a greater life in later life. I'm Jeremy Probert, and in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Christine O'Kelly, coordinator of the Age-Friendly University at Dublin City University. Christine's just come back from taking a group of older Irish athletes to compete at the Older Olympics in Zvolan, Slovakia, and is now gearing up to host the 15th biannual meeting of the European Federation of Older Students, all while dealing with her day job running the hugely successful AFU at DCU. So good morning, Christine.
SPEAKER_01Good morning, Jeremy.
SPEAKER_00How are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm fine, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Glad to hear it. So yeah, we're talking about the Age-Friendly University. But before we talk about the Age-Friendly University, I know that you recently took a group of older athletes out to the older Olympics in Slovakia in a place called Zvoland. So do you want to just tell us how that came about briefly and how it was? How was the trip?
SPEAKER_02Well, and actually, in fact, the trip was absolutely fantastic. So this was organized by the University of the Third Age group in Slovakia, in in Zvolan, which is the town it's based in. And University of the Third Age, unlike H-Friendly University, which is a campus-based experience, University of the Third Age is a conceptual framework that there's people who meet up together, they're peer-led learning groups, so they learn from each other, and they have a connection with a local university or a local college. And that's the difference between the two. So H-Frend University is very much campus-based, in higher education, completely embedded in the university, and U3A is in the periphery of a university, if you can understand. So one of my colleagues there organizes this U3A Olympics every single year. They're doing it for the last 15 years. So this is the 15th Olympics. 11 countries took part, and we had three days of activities: table tennis, shooting, bowling, um, zumba dancing, athletics, and um something else. Oh, archery. Archery. So it was really, really interesting. And we got to meet loads of other people. There was about 300 contestants at the whole event from all of the countries. And we had a proper Olympic march out when we opened the conference, when they opened when they opened the Olympics, and they marched out with the when we were very proud behind the Irish flag, of course. And uh and we had um eight participants at the at at the program that took part. So we took part in all of the activities, and from that, um one of my participants won a gold medal in table tennis, a bronze medal in table tennis, a silver medal in shooting, and then we won a bronze medal in the bowling. So they did very, very well for the first time, and they took part in everything. We also had on the second night of the event an award ceremony with a uh, you know, a bit of a disco and some music, and then they also got every country up to sing, which is quite funny because the Irish contingent got up and sang Molly Malone. It's the one thing everybody knew, and then they decided that there was two Spanish um participants as well who were on their own. They're only just the two of them, so we sort of adopted them. So they said they didn't know any Spanish songs, and I said, You do so. We all know A Viva Hispania. So had everybody singing that, we went to Anna Baum at the Olympics, and they've invited us back again for the next Olympics next year. Um and also part of the programme, there were some wonderful cultural events, visits to local um castles and cultural activities, and then of course there was a visit to a thermal spa. And um just meeting the other participants was really fabulous, you know, and even when there were language barriers, we still got to have the crack, you know, got to understand what people were saying. And then we also had a series of lectures from all of the countries participating, had somebody with them who was going to the lectures. I did mine, mine was in ecology and technology, and so I did four lectures while I was over there. So we all had a chance to do the educational programme that ran in parallel to the sporting event as well. So it was really terrific, really terrific.
SPEAKER_00It's a bit like an uh an older Erasmus exchange.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was actually Erasmus, yes. And uh, I mean, everybody who was there, you know, luckily for me, I had bought a load of things out of Carol's before I went to the shop, and I had lots of little pins and badges and tea towels and stuff to give out because I came home with a suitcase laden with stuff from Romania and Latvia and Czech Republic and Poland and Turkey and the Ukraine and of course Malta. So we came back laden down with with goodies and we went over with lots of Irish things. So but it was a big hit, it was really great, and uh, I'd love to bring another group back next year, bigger and better. You know, we we're not called the fighting Irish for nothing.
SPEAKER_00It was a cultural, it was a cultural exchange as well, and and I suppose proof that age is no barrier to participation, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_02And you know, we had there was an over 70s category and an under 70s category. So we went along and we competed in the different categories, and there's great spirit of you know, uh camaraderie. Um one or two of the countries were quite competitive, um, but uh but we beat them. And uh we uh that that was quite interesting just to see you know the interaction going on. And um no, it was really great. And people had individual conversations with other people, and everybody made it an opportunity, you know, took the chance to speak to people while they were over there and introduce themselves and say, Well, I'm from Ireland and where are you from? And so that was that was really fantastic, you know.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. And I mean, if you've talked about doing it again, and if somebody who's listening to this wanted to be a part of it, they would have to be part of AFU, is that right?
SPEAKER_02They would have to be part of our age friendly university initiative, but we have people in here who there's lots of different elements you can engage with DCU in particular. So we have people coming in to do the educational programs, so we have two different educational programs. One is audit-based modules from the undergraduate program, so you're in with the mainstream students, but you don't have to do the exams or assignments, and we have 127 of those to choose from, and then we have a customized lifelong learning module which includes opera, painting, art appreciation, singing, um, psychology, we've English, we've history, all on that program as well. And they're two educational programs, but on top of that, we also have a sports program in the sports centre. So you join the gym, we've 800 people doing that, Active for Life programme. And then, of course, we also have the research element. So we've lots of research going on here. So next year we'll be doing a big piece of research for the Healthy Initiative program here, and we'll be doing some work on Nordic walking poles. So it's all very interesting the work we do here. So you can engage this, and if you don't like any of those things, you can come to our coffee mornings or our cultural outings, which we sometimes have, you know. Maybe it could be the castles of you know, castles around Dublin. And there's a lot of castles in Dublin. So that's quite interesting, you know.
SPEAKER_00So there is absolutely no excuse, really, no barrier to entry uh at all here. So so when when is a good time for people to get in contact with you, the age-friendly university, to enroll?
SPEAKER_02Join up, join up any anytime during the year, because if you're on the mailing list, you'll get absolutely everything, notification of everything. And can I just say we're not the only, we're the first age-friendly university in the world. And uh we've we have most of the universities in Ireland now are becoming age-friendly. So they have programs. So if you're not living in Dublin, please do check uh with your local, you know, University of Limerick or Mary Immaculate College or um Munster Technological Universities, do check with the others to see what programs are they offering you if they're if they're involved with us, because most of them are. So I think UCC is going to be joining very shortly. So that's very it's great to have that widespread. And I mean, overall in the world we have 156,000 or 156 universities globally in the age-friendly network.
SPEAKER_00And and I know we we've talked about this before, Christine, because you and I talk on a regular basis. But just briefly, the benefits of lifelong learning for older people. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02At the end of the day, it's not just lifelong learning, it's engagement. The benefits are huge. You've got the social interaction, you've got the keeping the mind active, you've got the sense of purpose coming into the university, you've got the knowledge. So it's really fantastic all the things you can do. And I don't think lots of older people in particular have uh, you know, an askewed sort of relationship with education. They may have had a very bad educational experience in their younger years. That is really irrelevant to the education you're going to be having in here. And lifelong learning is not just about formal education, it's about informal education as well. And they're like the things like the social activities, the cultural activities, the exposure to those sort of activities. And it's about having all that engagement going on, even the whole business of saying, okay, I'm going to rock up to DCU today because there's a there's a nice, there's a very good presentation on the solar system. And it's just the whole business of having somewhere to go, getting out, getting on the bus or driving the car, getting into the university, meeting people, having a cup of tea, listening to the lecture, having a postmortem about the lecture, you know, like all of that is fantastic. You know, and it's not just about a nice education or nice entertainment programme, by the way, for older people either, because it does engage, you're engaging in a narrative discourse, and you're also engaging in in that whole area of looking at when when when you go to a lecture, it's a discussion. It's a discussion where you're hearing it's a conversation between you and the lecturer. So the lectures telling you their knowledge, their expertise, sharing all that. And sometimes you're asking questions back, and sometimes those questions leave the lecture to go, oh, no, it's all of that aspect. So that's really important as well to us here in DCU.
SPEAKER_00Very good. I mean, I I was reading an article very recently about the um that the super fit over 60s. You've got um uh you've got the uh over 60s now who, and clearly we we we know that the population is getting older, people are living longer. So we've got over 60s now going to the gym three, four times a week, doing the walking, 60 16,000 steps a day. Who has time for that? Anyway, that's a that's a different question. Um, but I guess what you're talking about, the age-friendly universal, what you're talking about is the super mentally fit, over 60s, over 70s.
SPEAKER_02And it's not even mental fitness, it's it's it's like, you know, okay, you know, you can do the cause for it as you get older and keep the mind going. But that's not the same as challenging yourself. And really challenging yourself to do something that's a bit outside your comfort zone sometimes, or that maybe, okay, you don't want to do an educational program, but you'd like to say, how do they figure out that's the way they're going to maybe inform policy? We'd have a lot of policy information stuff going on. So how does the government decide they're going to have this approach with launcher care? How does who decide that we're going to use cash instead of cards or cards instead of cash? Who decides all those things? And that's where you you have an opportunity to use your voice. And Jeremy, I may tell you that most people are working and they do not know all this stuff is going on, or then they're subconscious about the fact that it's going on the periphery of their lives. But then suddenly you're retired and you first of all you've worked all the time, so you don't know what's going on in your community, because you never had to be involved in yourself as a community, but you've all this 40 hours a week on bases of how you're going to figure it out. And I can tell you, I've said it before, you don't play golf for 40 hours a week. You can't, you know. Um, there's other things to be doing, and that's where something like our program comes into its own because there's lots of activities going on here that you can take. It's like pick and choose and pick and mix, and there's no exclusion. The other thing we would have is a lot of promotional affairs and things. So even if people wanted to volunteer, they're in in the program, and they say, I'll do, say, the 50 plus show, for example, would be one thing we would do. It's a big recruitment for us in the RDS, or they might we might have local events that we're promoting the university at. So we have ambassadors from the program that do that. We've ambassadors from the program that sit in on other committees within DCU. We've two of our participants are representatives on the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament. So again, that's about informing policy and advocacy. So it's really important to have that voice and that conduit into that, you know, policy making, decision-making, all of that, you know.
SPEAKER_00The the the message here is very much get involved. There's so much to do and so many things to do, which is which is great. So the other thing that's happening, happening fairly soon, is the European Federation of Older Students. Older Students meeting meeting, which is being hosted at DC, or you're hosting it basically. Tell us a bit about that. It's it's the 15th European Federation of Students.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's actually the third, it's the 30th year of it, in fact, 31st year of it. So the European Federation of Older Students was set up by a lady from Germany back 30 years ago who looked at the fact that we didn't really have any sort of way for older students to meet up with each other and to look at our learning programs and share the learning between each uh organizations around Europe. So it's come together and um we come together. There's about 30 of us now involved in the programme. And actually, in fact, my colleagues in Slovakia, that's where I met them, they're members of the European Federation of Older Students. So they meet twice a year, it's biannual meeting, and Dublin is hosted the next one, you know, the end of the month here, and it's actually coinciding with the big conference we're actually having here as well. So these are people who are working with older people around Europe. We have membership from Spain, Romania, Germany, France, obviously Ireland, all coming together to look at the types of things we're doing, how we can improve on our work, if there's any shared learning we can know about, and to exchange uh opportunities as well for the Erasmus, because uh DCU in particular is the only university in Ireland with adult Erasmus accreditation, which means we can take our older people away on Erasmus for a week at a time, and that's fantastic, and that's how we went to Slovakia. I have a group going to Malta in November, a group going to Malaga in January, I have another group going to Poland next May. So that's how we make those connections, that whole network. And it's a combination of lectures, cultural visits, um, exchanges, and cultural exchanges, sometimes about language. Um, we have priority areas that we focus on in in our lectures. So, for example, in Slovakia, it was on technology and ecology. So, our our lectures were directed at that. In my case, it's on ecology and um encore careers and social participation. They're my three priority areas. So I'm always looking for opportunities to to have an exchange um with another country, and then we also host mobilities here. So we had a big group in this year from Malika, just a week before we went to Slovakia. We had another group in from Alicante. Oh, we had a group, we had two students from Alicante who stayed with us for six weeks, a few a few months ago, and they lived on campus as part of the student body. And I have another two in January coming as well. So it's really a great way of meeting new groups and looking at new types of teaching methods and approaches that we would have in the program.
SPEAKER_00Another opportunity for your students as well. And I have to say, I was actually I was at DCU just a few weeks ago and I crossed paths, literally crossed paths with the group from Malaga. So I saw them and they looked like they were having a great time. They really were.
SPEAKER_02They had a fantastic time. There's a whole programme, and um and I love New Ways because the the program combines cultural activities with lectures and also peer-led learning. So we have some wonderful participants in our program and that are really experts in what they do. We've a wonderful lady who does a fantastic lecture on the history of whiskey in Ireland. So there's whiskey tastings, and that goes down like a bomb, I can tell you. And uh, we also have um we have other people who do things like we've an aviation historian, and she's fantastic about the whole role of women in the aviation industry. And in fact, last semester, um, that particular lady was doing her her presentation, and the group leader in the Spanish group, and they were in from the University of Cordoba, um, discovered suddenly realized that her grandmother was one of the first women in Spain to hold hold have an aviation license. So this went down like it was really brilliant that synchronicity. Do you know what I mean? That you don't think about so we we we also look within the expertise of our partners, you know, and our participants here in the programme, as well as, of course, the academic environment in the university, you know, when we're looking at things and trying to do things, you know.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. And so just going back to the European Federation of Students meeting, uh what do you expect or what are you hoping will come out of it?
SPEAKER_02Well, the three-day meeting usually sets an agenda for the work of the focus for the new year, especially this one in October. Um, when we were at the one in Poland, so just earlier in the year. So, what we usually do is we look at what's coming up, we look at how we're going to support each other, how we're going to learn from each other, and opportunities that maybe we we might discover. For example, in the last um in the last uh session we were in in Poland, we got some very really great links to different uh approaches to ecology and experts from the WHO who would come into the university here and provide us with information for our participants. So that was a shared uh contact that we didn't didn't have, even though TCU does a lot on climate and sustainability. But we just thought that was really interesting to have that person in, and we've we're having him in um in December. So that's sort of shared learning and understanding from each other. So next the the meeting in in uh in October really focuses on where we're going to go over the next year and what's going to be the focus of our priorities. So sometimes we take a priority like, for example, ecology or technology or whatever, and we focus on that. Um so I haven't actually spoken to the the uh the chairperson's going to tell us. She usually tells us at the at the on the event this is going to be the focus of the work, they have a committee what's for the next year or so, and we'll be working on that towards that. And of course, also the exchanges are really important. So I know that Rocklaw and Poland are going to be hosting us next May. Um, Girona in Spain, the University of Barcelona is going to be hosting us to a visit to Girona in April. And uh, and then I have other people who we're always encouraging to join us. So the University of Uppsala is going to be coming over in February, and then they're going to be hosting us as well. So it's great to have that exchange. It really is. I mean, you can't, you could never put a monetary value on any of that, you know. And of course, these visits are fairly well funded by the European Union, you know, under the Erasmus programme. So it's it's wonderful to have that opportunity, you know.
SPEAKER_00Tell you what, I mean, I I I haven't I don't I mean I realised you had a great job, Christine, but now I'm starting to understand quite how great it is. Uh anyway, there we go. But the the so the the the European Federation of World, the EFOS meeting, uh, is being it's co-located, isn't it, with the Generations at Work Conference.
SPEAKER_02So we we decided we would have um our the big focus of the European Union at the moment is a whole policy development around generations um and intergenerational fairness. And we all know about intergenerational work. I mean, I see lots of people talk about the preschool going into the older person's nursing home and things like that. But I don't think people really realize that it's a lot more serious than that. It's a lot there's a lot of value to be had in intergenerational engagement because we're learning from each other. And I think this is really important. And I mean the focus of my my presentation in in uh Slovakia last week was what would happen if everything stopped tomorrow, if we didn't have electricity, if we didn't have you know food delivery services, how would we cope? How would our par how would our young people cope? Would they have the skills to cope? And the whole idea of make, do, and mend that whole mentality. And I'm not talking about being explicitly, you know, standing beside somebody and saying, This is what you have to know. We all learned from our parents, from our grandparents, we stood beside somebody who showed us this is what they this is what you do. Now you have a go and try it out like that. And I think that's really important. Um, and it's it's a divide that's becoming greater, you know, over the years, and where young people might have an opinion that older people don't care about you know the environment. In actual fact, they've been doing you know environmental awareness for their whole lives, but we just didn't call it that. Um, the whole idea of saving string a simple in a simple way or saving things and reusing things in a different way and not rushing out to buy, I mean, you know, there's a new e-directive about um, you know, the sustainability of white goods. So that sort of thing, you know, is really, really important. And I think that we have a lot of teach to teach older people younger people, and and those skills and the skills that they have um would be lost otherwise. So from an intergenerational perspective, if we don't invest in looking at these areas for our young people, we're we're living longer, so there's more of us on the planet, and younger people are coming up behind us. So we do need a way that we can all live in harmony, and we need each other, and that's really, really important. So I think from the point of view of it's not just about older people and bringing older people and younger people together. I think it's about um looking at the whole business of uh intergenerational and fairness being about the distribution of opportunity and the resources that we have and the knowledge and the responsibility. It's not just about bringing the two groups together, it's about all of the ancillary things that go on in between that. So this is what the conference is about. It's over two days. There are five themes to it. We have lifelong learning, we have um working for longer lives, we have work for all ages, then we also have healthy work futures, uh, we have community innovation, and of course, we have lifelong learning and intergeneration fairness. And we have a wonderful lineup of speakers. And what I thought was very interesting was it's not just about an aging conference, it's really looking at what happens when longer lives disrupt the traditional sequencing of education, work, and retirement. That's what really the conference is all about, and we're looking at that. So I There's four key elements emerging from the conference papers that I can see is that like learning is no longer belong no longer belongs to youth, of course. That work is no longer being designed around a short linear career. We're looking at different opportunities and even in the mid-50s, looking at different directions and changes because we have another 20 years of potential work at 50. When you think about the retirement age, maybe 70. And of course, longevity requires institutions rather than individuals alone to adapt. And of course, as I mentioned about the intergenerational fairness, it's an opportunity to share those resources. So I really think it's an important conference. I know when you have your conference, you're always thinking, oh, it's my baby, and I wanted to be out there in the in the world. But I don't think anybody has really talked about any of these issues in Ireland before in that way. And um, I think it's a it's it'll be an interesting dialogue and looking at and how could we change that narrative in the long run or even start a bigger conversation.
SPEAKER_00You are absolutely right. Um the age-friendly university is supported in some small way by Spry Finance, and clearly SPRI are constantly considering this disruption of the normal, as you've put it, the the normal way of things, whether it's you know education, work, retirement. Uh everybody at all age groups are going to have to adapt to having more older people around. Uh, I think this this truth, this is the truth of it. And business is going to have to adapt to having to the needs of of older people, and society is going to have to adapt, and infrastructure is going to have to adapt, and government is going to have to adapt. But as you rightly say, no one seems to be really talking about it in a big way. So a conversation like this is obviously going to be very key.
SPEAKER_02But you know, Jeremy, I've been in the sector for about 40 years now, working in aging and all around advocacy and promoting the rights of older people. And it's I'm very sad to say that in those years, very little has changed. You know, in a fundamental way, okay, you know, we have governments that talk about, oh, we provide more nursing homes. Nursing homes are not the way to go. We don't want nursing homes. We want more care in the community, and we want people to have a healthy lifestyle. So for me here in DCU, one of the most important things about this job is about our students and influencing them around the longevity dividend. Years ago, we all grew up in families where our grandmother might be living with us or our aunt might be living, or uncle, you know, and we grew up in those sort of families. But nowadays, lots of young people don't have anybody older in their lives other than their parents. So they see aging as being another. It's other other people over there, you know, and um they maybe don't they don't really understand, you know, we've lived through puberty and we've lived through adolescence and we've lived through middle age, and now we're on the other side of the fence. So I'm not an expert in aging because an older agent, because I'm not of an older age, but we have all these people, and that's how you learn from people. You learn about even things like the menopause. Nobody ever talks about it, but it's starting to be talked about more now because people share that knowledge. Or we talk about it the skills base or the law skills. And I know people have a great fear that AI is going to take over the world, but AI is a tool, and like every tool, it needs to be managed. And I think that's really important for people to understand that. And, you know, when I left school and there were no computers, we were all told, Oh, computers will change your life. We'll have no more paper. Well, I have more paper now than I ever had. And and also, you know, we we still need to do the fundamental reading and writing. So I think that's sort of um very interesting to look at. Because, yes, some jobs may have gone, but there'd be new jobs coming. So that's something to look at. And I think from a from a a training point of view, and even with employers, I would say to employers, don't write off people over 50. Because in actual fact, you've all this experiential learning, you've got fantastic knowledge. And people say I've often asked employers, why don't you employ somebody who's 50 plus? You know, and the attitude is oh, you know, they're not trained or they've no skills. And I would really question that. I say, What do you mean they've no skills? If I change my job tomorrow, the first thing I'm going to have to do is get a whole load of new skills because I'm going to be in a new training environment where people say, Well, this is the way the protocols are in our office or our our business, and you have to upskill yourself on the database or and you know, we're all used to doing that. We're all used to being told, you know, this is a new way of working. And I'm sure over the last few years, Jeremy, nobody actually sat down and sat sat down beside you and told you this is how you work this, because you have to figure these things out for yourself as well. So I think that we're always adapting and we're always learning. And I don't think it's correct that people um in their mid-50s as well are being are being just, you know, no more work for you, because I think that's that's we'd much longer lives to live, and we we need a new future for that, you know.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I'm I'm I'm wholly and utterly anti-ageism. And unfortunately, now now I've got to that point. I do recognise that you know, when I was young and stupid, I probably displayed signs of ageism, if you see what I mean.
SPEAKER_02But I mean Yeah, but I'm also going to say to you when you're young and stupid, I I think young people suffer from ageism as well. You know, when we tell young people, you know, you're young and stupid, I think we have to look at ageism as one of those cross-sexual things and is intersectional. You know, I mean, I also think it's very interesting that, you know, people don't think about the LGBTQY community would also have older people in them. I mean, look at Senator David Norris. As far as I'm concerned, he did more for that sector than anybody else living in the whole of the Ireland because he he brought it out there, he put it out there, and I mean he faced his critic criticisms, but he got the word out there. And I think that that was something that was really his champion, a champion to do that. You know, so some people, and we've had a lot of changes in legislation where we have, you know, we have uh the marriage referendum and the abortion referendum, but those things didn't just happen overnight, they were built on the shoulders of giants who went before us. So I would think younger people remember that, you know, and while they're driving it from one end, you can be driving it and supporting it from another end. So I don't think we can do things separately.
SPEAKER_00No, I agree. And I don't I do think it just goes back to something uh you said earlier, which is you know, what would happen if everything stopped tomorrow? How how how would we cope? Uh and then you talked about AI now. You say I am I am an AI doomer, uh, and I do believe that AI probably that there will be something will happen. But there will be old people to teach young people how to you know make fire and trap rabbits and stuff like that, you know. So we will survive, humanity will survive. Um, so just just sort of wrapping this up, is there anything that's going to come out of the generations conference that may influence government policy? Or is is there any way that there is that the outcomes from the conference can be fed into?
SPEAKER_02Well, certainly we would be making recommendations. I mean, I certainly see from the conference papers, I mentioned those four areas that I I talked about earlier about work and about um longevity. I think it's it's a question of seeing what the like I'm really, really interested to hear what the keynote speakers are going to say, because we have uh Professor Formosa, who's an expert on lifelong learning from Malta. Um we and then, of course, we have um Mr. Mario Nava, who's the Director General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion from the European Commission. So I'm very, very interested to hear what those people have to say and and their expertise. We also have Mr. Nicholas Schmidt, and he is the EU Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights. So they're all coming at it from a view of looking at a European Union element. We have Healthy Work Futures, which is Dr. Franz Fergent IFI, and he's from a Eurofound. Now I'm sure you all are familiar, or you may not be familiar with Eurofound. You know these statistics you see in the in the newspapers. 50% of Europeans think this or this or this. They're all from Eurofound. So they do a lot of work around statistical analysis. And then we have community innovation, which is Dr. Constantinus, and he's the vice president and chairperson at the European Network of Living Labs. So that's ENOL, E-N-O-L-L. And then we, of course, we have um a very interesting speaker called Patrick Penix, and Patrick is currently the he's the president of the Irish senior, sorry, the European Senior Citizens Parliament Union, and he's also involved in the age platform in Europe, which is like the European Parliament in Europe that looks at all the ageing issues. So we have a fantastic lineup. We've got input coming from the National Youth Council, from the student unions, uh, from secondary schools, and as well from leading academics around the country and around Europe. So I think that it could be a fascinating conference, and I it's the keynotes I really want to hear what they think because they are keynotes on what they're doing, and they're able to they've they've access to knowledge from the future that we don't have access to at the moment, but they've seen things happening, and I'm really, really interested to see what they're going to say.
SPEAKER_00So, Christine, thank you very much indeed. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, to hear about Zivolan, to hear about the age-friendly university, hear about University of the Third Age, to hear about the European Federation of Students and finally the Generations at Work conference. There's a lot of food for thought there. So, thank you very much indeed for your time. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02And thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. And of course, as usual, we always enjoy spy support. Thank you. Thank you very much.