Ibasho attended at the High-level expert meeting on Technologies for Humanitarian aid at the EU Parliament

Emi Kiyota, founder of Ibasho attended the High-level expert meeting on Technologies for Humanitarian aid at the EU Parliament. The link below is the blog post from the Scientific Foresign (STOA) at the EU Parliament. At this meeting, Ibasho conveyed that “Elders should be treated as resources at the time of crises. Their role should not always be recipients of help who need to be looked after, but also be as active participants whose experiences and wisdoms can help to overcome our societal challenges. Technologies should be designed to enable elders to be empowered and included as a part of solution.” Click here to read the blog post by STOA at the […]

Ibasho presentation at the SXSW

Emi Kiyota (Ibasho) and Jose Colucci (University of Texas) delivered a presentation “Fresh thinking on Old Age: Design for fulfillment” at the SXSW conference. The session was well received and generated many interesting questions from the audience. I hope our presentation challenged our current idea regarding the design for aging, and will stimulate the future discussion to make our society a better place for people of all ages! Fresh Thinking on Old Age: Design for Fulfillment Synopsis of the session: For this session, José Colucci — an IDEO designer and aging specialist — partners with Emi Kiyota — an environmental gerontologist, cultural change expert and founder of Ibasho — to […]

Ibasho project in Nepal

Ibasho team has visited to Nepal in February, 2016, to launch our project with a social venture company, Bihani, founded by Santoshi Rana. It all started with an email from Santoshi, asking us “Nepal needs the Ibasho concept. How can we adapt it here?” Since we did not have resources to kick started at that time, we have kept in touch to explore the possibility for almost one year. During this time, our passion did not disappeared, and we were finally able to visit Kathmandu to plan the Ibasho project together. What I have realized was that there were so much for us (from so called “developed parts of the […]

Challenging Ageism

URA(Urban Redevelopment Authority) in Singapore has published an article about our Ibasho projects. I am so grateful to all who have been generously supporting and promoting Ibasho… It is our hope to work with more elders from various parts of the world, and learn from them… Click here to read the article.

Mobile Ibasho cafe trial: Philippines

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 […]

Ibasho Lecture in Singapore

I had a great opportunity to share our Ibasho activities at the Creative Ageing Cities Symposium in Singapore. I was also able to learn from case studies and projects for aging were presented from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Singapore. I feel that our societal perception about aging is slowly shifting, as more younger people are joining for the discussion of aging. I hope that Ibasho can continue to encourage elders and lead the way to create a stronger communities for people of all ages. Emi

It is not about luxury. It is about the meaning of life…

I was invited to “Aging 2.0 Washington DC” to describe about our effort in relation to the Intergenerational activities. Below is my brief talk. I hope our society will realize that “what makes people happy is not about the luxury but the meaningful life and relationships…” Before sharing what we do and why we do our work, I would like to share a quote that I found in an elementary school in Bhutan. “The time to be happy is now, the place to be happy is here, the way to be happy is to make other people happy.” Everybody wants to be useful to others, regardless of their age. And […]

Cross-cultural friendships among elders… continues!

“I have learned that we have something we can do to help people in the Philippines. I always thought that helping people in other countries was beyond what we could do. But we don’t have to be in United Nations or international organizations to make difference. We received so much help from others. It is our turn to do something for the people in the Philippines. There is a lot I want to do with them and to learn from them. I hope we can help each other for a long time.” – 74 year old man from Ofunato, Japan Upon learning that the Ibasho concept was being replicated in […]

Elders in Ormoc, Philippines are leading community resilience

In April, 2014, five months after the typhoon Yolanda alit in the Philippines, Ibasho teams and HelpAge-COSE members visited five communities affected by the typhoon, including Barangay Bagong Buhay. The visitors helped assess the communities’ needs and exchanged ideas with local elders about how Ibasho can help elders to develop their livelihood projects that also benefit younger members of community. Ibasho team chose Barangay Bagong Buhay as the site for an Ibasho project in October 2014 and organized a launching workshop with a group of local elders in January 2015. Since then, elders in Barangay Bagong Buhay have made tremendous progress, with the help of a local Ibasho coordinator, a […]

Ibasho in Japan celebrated 2-year anniversary

In 2011, over 18,000 people were killed and more than 65,000 people were displaced when a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northern Japan. Entire communities were devastated, but among the survivors, both older and young spoke of elders who saved younger people’s lives by guiding them to higher ground and teaching them how to survive with extremely limited resources. In turn, older people expressed a great deal of gratitude for the aid they received. Many people of all ages wanted to give back and be useful to others but did not know how. The Ibasho cafe project was initiated in February 2012, and many volunteer experts from around the world […]

Ibasho’s documentary film: Elders leading resilience

Please watch the documentary film that captured the ways in which elders led inclusive community resiliency. This film was created with the generous support from the GFDRR (The World Bank). This documentary shows how community elders were empowered to help the community recover after the great earthquake in Ofunato, Japan in 2011. It assesses the experience of the Ibasho approach on post-disaster recovery and strengthening social capital. This film aims to capture the strength, wisdom, and humanity of elders, which will challenge our current social perception about aging and the role of elders. Although this film focused on the recovery from the natural disasters, we should have this type of […]