Comment
Over 50s open the national airwaves
BRIAN SHAKES, chief executive officer of the Over 50s Association, reports on the association’s up-to-date methods of communication.
The Over 50s introduced a new avenue for advocating to the politicians on behalf of our members in the crucial lead-up period to last month’s Federal election: we went ‘electronic’ for the first time.
If you’ve checked our website lately, you will have noticed that it has been revamped and upgraded so it’s easier to find information about the organisation and our groups, branches and services. That’s fine, and we’ve been wanting to do that for some time – but what is really new is the addition of a national on-line forum.
The e-forum provides access for people to make comments, suggest issues for the development of policy and advocacy, and give us real-life stories and examples to back up any case we put to politicians for legislative change.
We used it to good effect in late October and early November as a vehicle to gather questions from members that they wanted put to the politicians. Although time was short, we were able to submit half a dozen contributed questions via email to the appropriate ministers and shadow-ministers, along with our current policy positions, where appropriate.
Emailed answers came back swiftly on most of these, and they were immediately pasted back into the e-forum for general viewing.
We are excited about the potential of the e-forum as an information and advocacy tool. And the feedback we’ve had from members so far indicates enthusiasm as well. We even had two letters arrive pre-election by ‘snail-mail’ with questions to be posted on the e-forum!
It’s easy to use, providing you have access to a computer and the internet. For those who don’t have this at home, every local library now offers computing and web services. To connect, just follow the prompts on the opening page of the Over 50s website (www.over50s.asn.au) and register to log-in. Then, the airwaves are yours! And it doesn’t matter whether you live on the far coast of Western Australia, down south of Hobart or in downtown Shepparton.
We can see it being used by people as a vehicle to tell others about some of life’s successes, or the issues that make life difficult and what the solutions to these problems might be. You never know who might log in who can help, or knows someone else who can. That’s the great gift of on-line forums like this one – they open wide opportunities for information sharing.
As for our brief experiment before the election, it’s success was such that you can be sure we will be using the e-forum extensively in the future to carry our messages forward to the politicians on behalf of all our members – and other over fifties, wherever they are.
Log on and join us!
