National Council on Ageing Marks 14 Years

Ixchel Poot

While the National Council of Ageing is plowing along, there is much more to do to ensure that the rights of the elderly population are protected. Executive Director of the NCA, Ixchel Poot told News Five that they have been trying to strengthen care for older persons.

Ixchel Poot, Executive Director, National Council of Ageing

“The progress has not been as visible as we would like it to be in some areas, but over the years we have been consistently working on strengthening older persons, giving older persons a voice and creating more visibility for them in the community. The council has always had a really small staff; for the first seven years, we had one person and for the last seven we’ve had two. So we have had to depend very heavily on our networking capacity so we’ve been able to see lots of progress in that area. The flash mob today was one of the examples of that; that we could see where our network once activated would work and we could bring people forward. There is definitely headway that we need to make; our country does have a policy that puts us ahead of some other countries. That policy does need review, but one of the things that we have really been proud of is that over the last year or so the council has had a new strategic plan which is outlining new areas and looking at the strides in the past and the areas that we need to go in the future.”