GPV/KCV is pleased to launch its video on positive discipline.

Grandmothers and grandmothers in Canada, Australia, the UK and US have rallied in response to the crisis faced by grandmothers in Africa as they struggle to raise millions of children orphaned by AIDS. Local groups are raising funds in their communities to support the life-enhancing programs run by grandmothers in Africa and the community-led organisations who support them.
GPV is pleased to support this movement, which aims to amplify the voices and expertise of grandmothers, showing the world that leadership by older women is critical in reclaiming hope and rebuilding resilience across communities.
The Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign seeks for all grandmothers:
• Access to equitable and free health care
• Protection against discrimination and violence
• Protection and enforcement of land rights
• Improved quality of life and standard of living
• Quality education for our grandchildren
• Inclusion in decision-making bodies and policy discussions as representatives of older persons, women, people living with HIV, and caregivers.
The campaign was launched in 2006 as an initiative of the Stephen Lewis Foundation and has raised more than $40 million in support of it.
There are three local Grandmothers to Grandmothers groups in Australia. They are based in:
• Emerald, Victoria
• Barrington, NSW
• Mt Claremont in WA

https://grandmotherscampaign.org/

[email protected]

By Sally Feldman

Originally published online at theguardian.com on 20 August 2024

People still think that, once a woman is a grandmother, the rest of her life becomes irrelevant. That’s an absurdly outdated idea

“Nans against Nazis” read one large placard brandished at the recent anti-racism protests in Liverpool. It belonged to 71-year-old Pat. “Someone said to me, ‘You’re too old, don’t be doing this,’” she told the Independent. “But as long as they’re here someone’s got to do it.” She’s not the only one who refuses to be invisible. As the editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for more than a decade, I became so familiar with countless stories of active, busy older women that I’ve now written a book of advice for today’s grandmothers.

I interviewed more than 100 women. Many of them were exasperated at the tired old stereotypes that either portray us as frail, ancient, hobbling, lonely old biddies, or the equally cliched antithesis: “battling grannies” or “granny heroines”. The very word “granny” has become a shorthand for “old lady”, a handy way to define us by our age and dwindling status (and it bears little relation to whether or not you actually have grandchildren).

It’s still glibly assumed that, once a woman becomes a grandmother, everything else in her life becomes irrelevant. That’s absurdly outdated.Whatever their age, many grandmothers will continue working or will lead busy, demanding lives outside their family responsibilities. The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, who at 44 is the youngest grandmother in parliament, doesn’t appear to see any conflict between the two roles.

Despite this, some clearly find the traditional image so ludicrous that they turn to parody. “I’m going to be a little bit more of a granny,” Joanna Lumley told the Northern Echo. “Which involves eating a lot of cake and becoming quite big. I want to have one of those housecoat overalls, a nice big one so I get a bit Demis Roussos about it.” I remember the comedian Jenny Eclair saying: “I want to be a good nana, but I’m not sure what this entails. I think it means putting protective sheeting over the good sofa, blockading the stairs and trying not to mind when they bring a truckload of plastic toys with them – what’s wrong with a simple wooden spinning top?”

According to Age UK, 40% of the country’s grandparents over the age of 50 have regularly looked after their grandchildren. But that pattern is beginning to change. The forum Gransnet teems with grandmothers who are tired of entitled offspring who expect free childcare on tap. “We often have to reschedule work commitments to fit in with grandkids’ needs, and cancel social invitations,” writes one disgruntled granny. Many grandmothers lead busy, active lives and aren’t ready to regard themselves simply as childminders. Many of those I spoke to for my book resented any suggestion that older means duller, more passive or more conservative.

This growing backlash is personified by Raging Grannies, a group of activists who campaign across North America on peace and environmental causes, challenging stereotypical views of older women and the assumption that political action is only for the young. During more than 30 years of activism, Raging Grannies have held several anti-war rallies, and in July 2005 five members of the group were charged with trespassing after they attempted to enlist at a US army recruitment centre in Tucson, Arizona. The group said they wanted to be sent to Iraq so that their children and grandchildren could come home.

They represent many grandmothers across the world who are working to make a difference. Frequently, these women are drawn to campaigning by their concern for the environment. This year, a group of older women in Switzerland won the first climate change victory in the European court of human rights, claiming that their country’s inaction on fossil fuels violated their human rights. The group of more than 2,000 women, known as the “climate grannies”, argued that because older women are more likely to die in heatwaves – which have become hotter and more common because of fossil fuels – Switzerland should do its share to stop the planet heating, and to abide by the Paris agreement target of 1.5C. The ruling demonstrated the power of older women. “We are not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit,” said one of their members, Elizabeth Stern.

They aren’t alone. Take the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, whose participants range from the Arctic to Brazil, Tibet to Mexico. Their faith is based on spiritual principles and the practice of traditional medicines. They’re deeply concerned with environmental degradation, poverty, our materialist culture and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. Crucially, they believe that the wisdom of our ancestors can “light our way through an uncertain future”.

Other groups were founded to cope with specific challenges. The Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, a cross-continental project formed in 2006, was set up in response to the crisis faced by grandmothers in African countries as they struggled to raise millions of children orphaned by Aids. The project originally brought together African and Canadian women to support and learn from each other, raising funds and creating educational programmes to support them.

The project has since raised more than $40m, and now includes grandmother groups in Canada, Australia, the UK and the US. Their work is highlighted by the US photojournalist Paola Gianturco, whose book Grandmother Power: A Global Phenomenon assembles an inspiring gallery of women determined to make a difference. Among her subjects are Indian grandmothers bringing solar energy and light to their villages, and Argentinian grandmothers who have searched out and returned more than 100 children kidnapped during the military dictatorship of the late 1970s.

You may not be mounting the barricades, shouting out on Instagram, organising food boycotts or suing your country, but by doing what you can to make the world better for the next generation, and filling your life (and those of your grandchildren, if you have them) with love, goodness and a commitment to ethical principles, you can still be a raging granny. Dismiss us at your peril.

GPV commends the white paper Ending Loneliness Together in Australia

The paper, released November 2020, is the first white paper to highlight the growing problem of loneliness in Australia and is well worth reading.

The paper lists recommendations to drive a national approach to end loneliness, and describes the latest research and data on the prevalence of loneliness. It identifies communities that are especially vulnerable to loneliness, and outlines the policy, practice and process pathways that can be modified and adapted to combat loneliness effectively.

Dr Michelle Lim, Australia’s leading scientific expert on loneliness, says:
“The impact of loneliness in Australia is broad and deep; it cuts across all sectors of our society.”

GPV/KCV welcomes the discussions now happening around the world about the use of smartphones by children and young people and encourages all families to think about the issue.
An article from a mother in the UK about smartphones and children outlines some of the arguments in favour of being cautious about the use of these devices. It comes at a time when the UK is looking at ways to restrict the use of smartphones by children.

I’m a teacher – and this is why I’m not giving my son a smartphone yet

By Lola Okolosie, English teacher and writer focusing on race, politics, education and feminism.
Originally published in The Guardian on 2 June 2023
The adverse effects on children’s mental health are well known, and pre-teens are too young to safely navigate the Internet
“But everyone has one,” pleads my son as his father and I tell him, for the umpteenth time, that no, he will not get a smartphone. Not now and probably not for a few more years.
Despite our firm resolve, it is hard not to feel sorry for him. As the end of year 6 draws closer, the weeks are peppered with stories of new classmates whose parents have, as one friend texted recently, “cracked”.
WhatsApp groups are springing up so that friends going to different secondaries can easily keep in touch. It is a world of interaction he will remain ignorant of, but, much though it pains me to see the turmoil it causes, I feel vindicated each time I read about the detrimental impact that smartphones are having on children.
One report published earlier this year from the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, revealed that nearly a third of young people will have viewed pornography by the age of 11.
Such content, De Souza clarifies, will not be the equivalent of “top-shelf” material some parents may have viewed in their youth and which today would be considered quaint. It is material in which “depictions of degradation, sexual coercion, aggression and exploitation are commonplace, and disproportionately targeted against teenage girls”.
Or there is the research conducted last year by Ofcom showing that bullying is more likely to happen on a device rather than face to face.
School bullies are not new, but their ability to reach into the sanctuary of the home is a recent development. The problems that arise from pupils’ interactions on social media are taking up large portions of teachers’ time. In February, headteacher Jon Boyes of Herne Bay high school told parents that they would have to sort out arguments between pupils that have taken place online. It was “impossible for the school to police” and the principal cause of “disagreements, stress, anxiety and trauma” among pupils, he wrote. The head urged parents to try to limit screen time, and reminded them that “most social media platforms have a minimum age of 13 years old … meaning most students in years 7 and 8 should not even be using social media”.
Although buying your child a smartphone may seem like the best way to keep them safe, or to ensure they don’t end up feeling socially isolated, evidence suggests that the technology is having dangerous effects on children’s mental health. The most recent survey published by the OECD’s programme for international student assessment (Pisa), of 15- and 16-year-olds in 37 countries around the world, showed that in all but one of those countries, nearly twice as many adolescents had “elevated levels of loneliness” with “school loneliness” proving high when smartphone access and internet use were also high. These findings were echoed in a recent global study of nearly 30,000 young adults, which found a link between the age a child received their first smartphone and their mental health in young adulthood.
Children who were given a phone later went on to experience better mental wellbeing in relation to their self-confidence and their ability to relate to others, researchers found. Conversely, those who received a phone at a younger age were more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, feelings of aggression towards others and the sense that they were detached from reality. These trends proved stronger in females than males but were consistent across all 41 countries surveyed in the report.
Children with smartphones spend, on average, more than three hours a day online, away from family time and in-person interactions. Social media compels them to “compare and despair”, and puts them in touch with toxic influencers such as Andrew Tate.
You might be inclined to dismiss all this as a pointless exercise in closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Yet given what we know, I don’t think defeat is an option.
Parents should be willing to entertain the notion that it’s possible to reject following the herd, at least until their children are old enough to navigate what they find on the internet. In fact, both TikTok and Snapchat require users to be 13 years old. There is power in pushing back against the idea that a smartphone is the only way to keep a child safe, or of ensuring they have access to important friendships. We can, like the 45,000 Texans who are part of the Wait Until 8th movement, which empowers parents to delay giving a smartphone to their children until 8th grade (year 9), hold the line until they become teenagers.
My son is only 10. He’s nowhere near ready to wade through the confusing and harmful detritus that he will no doubt find on the Internet. He hasn’t developed the emotional maturity to deftly avoid the litter along his route. As his parent, why would I assume he could navigate terrain many adults struggle to get a handle on? Since I can’t, I’ll make do with betting that he can survive with a good old-fashioned “dumbphone”, at least until he’s older.

KCV Podcast #31 – Cyber safety for children and young people