Council Celebrates Positive Ageing Month in Newry, Mourne and Down

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council alongside the Southern Health and Social Care Trust is encouraging local groups to get involved online as part of Positive Ageing Month. 

The purpose of this month is to recognise, highlight, celebrate and promote the many positive aspects of growing old and the very valuable contribution that the over 50s continue to make within our community. Due to COVID-19 restrictions the celebrations for this year’s event will take place in the virtual world with many events taking place via Zoom or similar online applications.

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Deputy Chairperson, Councillor Oonagh Magennis, said she was pleased with the Council’s commitment to developing and promoting the Age Friendly initiative and events such as Positive Ageing Month. “As people live longer, we all need to consider how best to support the older generation in our community – but also how best to celebrate them,” she said. “Positive Ageing Month offers opportunities for a range of events, activities and programmes to be held which celebrate the contribution older people make to their communities.” 

Councillor Magennis will officially open Positive Ageing Month with a virtual ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’ on Wednesday 6 October. For this event the organisers enlisted the help of four local schools — St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook, Newry High School, St Mark’s High School, Warrenpoint and St Louis Grammar School, Kilkeel. They will ask students to deliver tea boxes to the homes of 50 older people in their respective areas. The boxes contain a variety of edible goodies for consumption during the tea party but there will also be an invitation to join the ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’ with instructions of how to get online for the event. The pupils delivering the tea box will show the recipient how to do this via their PC, device or phone.

Positive Ageing Month has a wide range of free online sessions for older people to attend, covering topics such as cyber safety, online privacy and security, eat well and cookery demos, health workshops including dementia and Bowel Cancer awareness, money and energy saving advice and virtual sing-a-longs and reminiscence sessions.

For more information on the events taking place for Positive Ageing Month and to download the Calendar of Events please visit https://www.newrymournedown.org/health-and-wellbeing.