"Elders living in grass huts in Africa with children at their feet are often happier than people in assisted living homes with a chandelier over their heads."
Ever since she observed her grandmother’s decline in old age, Dr. Emi Kiyota has been searching for sustainable solutions to the unhappiness that often comes with aging.
"She was very healthy, even though she had a bit of dementia," recalls Kiyota about her grandmother. "But over time, her skills kind of faded away because she wasn't able to do anything for others. She was cared for, but she wasn't able to care for others."
That experience, and her work as an environmental gerontologist, led Kiyota to the conclusion that older people are unhappy for 2 reasons:
- Social isolation: "A lot of older people are surrounded by many people, but they still feel lonely because they have no meaningful relationships," says Kiyota.
- Loss of dignity: "When you get older, people just categorize you as an older person and forget that you were a teacher or a mother or someone with experience."
Kiyota has established a nonprofit organization called Ibasho to address these seemingly intractable problems and, in the process, change the culture of aging. The organization is working in several countries—including Kiyota’s native Japan—to create “socially integrated and sustainable communities that value their elders.”
Ibasho communities embody 8 principles, says Kiyota. Basically, they value the wisdom and experience of older people, encourage elders to participate fully in community life, and facilitate intergenerational connections.
"It is very simple," says Kiyota. "Everybody wants to be useful until they die, no matter what. But we don't provide environments that allow elders to be useful to others. Feeling useful is not good enough. People have to actually be useful."
The Ibasho Café: A Place Where You Feel Like Yourself
Ibasho is using a $400,000 grant from Honeywell Hometown Solutions to create such an environment in Ofunato, a small fishing center located in Iwate, Japan. The city of 42,000 residents sustained considerable damage during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's eastern coast.
"Everything was wiped out, so they needed a gathering place," says Kiyota. "We weren't interested in disaster relief or in building a temporary structure. We wanted to create a normal place where people could actually come and learn from older people."
Translating those aspirations into a concrete plan, and then constructing a building that would carry out those plans, took 2 years and many community meetings. But when the gathering place finally opened on June 13, 2013, it embodied the Japanese word "Ibasho," which means "a place where you can feel like yourself."
Planning the Café: A Participatory Process
A local nursing home organization helped Kiyota and her team connect with local elders who would be willing to plan and operate what is now known as the Ibasho Café. That work involved establishing a not-for-profit organization, designing the intergenerational gathering place, writing grant applications, and developing a co-op structure to help older adults staff the café.
Convincing older volunteers that they were up to these tasks was Kiyota’s biggest challenge.
"People really have a social perception of what older people should be doing and how we should be taking care of them," says Kiyota. "So the older people themselves believed that they couldn't do this project because they were old. We spent quite a bit of time working to change people's social perception."
With that barrier removed, older volunteers were free to articulate their hopes for the café. Primarily, they didn't want to be surrounded by only older people.
"Lots of older women like to cook and make little snacks," says Kiyota. "They wanted to serve what they made to younger people who don't know how to make traditional food. The women thought this would be something they could feel useful about."
The elders also wanted to welcome small children to the café. And, since they had raised their own children, they were eager to babysit young café patrons so their parents could relax with a cup of coffee or tea.
Older adults didn't carry out their planning in isolation. An intergenerational group of local residents reviewed and commented on the café design. In addition, the café’s only employee brought a younger person's perspective to the design process.
"The older people don't want to make cafe latte but young people would like to come for cafe latte," says Kiyota, giving one example of the intergenerational give-and-take. "So our young employee said, 'I will teach you how to make cafe latte.' We needed a young person to represent what young people want. Otherwise, the café would become an older person's hangout place."
Creating a Normal Environment
Several features of the Ibasho café were designed specifically to attract young people. Free Wi-Fi is available, which is rare in the disaster area. The café also has a library stocked with English-language children's books, which are difficult to find outside of major cities.
Most important, says Kiyota, the café offers none of the planned programs that one might find in a senior or community center.
"We are not making an institution here," says Kiyota. "If you want to chat with people, you chat with people. If you want to work on your computer, you can work. Our objective was to create a simple, normal gathering place where people can do whatever they want.”
It's too early to predict whether the Ibasho Café will be a success. Over the next year, 2 research projects will analyze whether the café, and the participatory planning process that developed it, actually enhanced social connections in Ofunato.
In the meantime, Kiyota has faith that Ofunato residents will support the café.
"This is a close-knit community, especially after the disaster," says Kiyota. "Everybody knows the importance of being connected to others."