A group of elders in Baragay Bagong Buhay organized a two weeks “mobile Ibasho cafe trial”. As we all expected, there were so many challenges and lessons to learn from this experience, however, they have generated profits and the trial was successful. Now, we know their strength and capacity as well as the limitation and challenges to improve. We are going ahead to move forward the Ibasho cafe idea together, so that elders will have a place where they can find opportunities to contribute to their community in Ormoc, Philippines.

There are so much “talk” and “think” about integration of elders into society and multi-generational interactions. Working with elders in Philippines and Japan, I learned that we should recognize the importance of “taking concrete actions within our capacities,” rather than trying to come up with a perfect plan by talking and thinking about it for a long time… A small trial like this taught us the importance of taking concrete action, regardless of how small the action could be.