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News Letter
  • 29/10/2024
Youth Club for Elderly
Transcript
00:00My name is Adrian Brown and I'm the Chair of the Regional Committee of U3A in Northern
00:11Ireland.
00:13We have 24 groups, widely scattered over Northern Ireland, as far west as Enniskillen, as far
00:20north as Derry, Stoke-Londonderry, as far south as Newry, and of course Belfast and
00:27Bangor are two very large ones on the eastern side.
00:3224 groups, with about 8,500 people in all and rising.
00:38We say in North Down and Arts, for example, we do everything from art to Zumba, 100 groups
00:45would you believe, all run by people themselves, run by the members for the members.
00:52U3A is really an organisation which caters for people who are retired or semi-retired.
01:07It promotes lifelong learning.
01:11Some people would call it a youth club for the elderly.
01:15It's a way of people learning what they want to learn for pleasure, for fun, meeting people,
01:21meeting new people, making friends, and generally improving their life, developing themselves
01:29so there is life beyond work and parenthood and in the third age that we all enjoy after
01:36work and family responsibilities are over.
01:42I retired from work about two and a half years ago and after I retired there was a lot of
01:48time on my hands.
01:49I said I need to be doing something and I happened to meet a member of the U3A at a
01:55social occasion who said to me why don't you join the U3A.
01:59I went along and I was hooked from sort of the first day.
02:03Initially I went and parked, saw them all assembling for their Monday walk and thought
02:08well I want to and actually at one stage got back in the car, then I walked across, signed
02:13up and because the group leader had retired I took over the leading of it.
02:21I've got a really good start to the week getting up on a Monday to go for a walk.
02:25I've better time management skills because I've taken on loads of things since and I
02:30have to fit them all in but probably the best bit is I've met a great, great group of people
02:35who have spoken to me and talked to me about other things and I've actually delved into
02:40some of these other things.
02:41It's been a massive change, I've worked in sort of backroom jobs for IT and I always
02:48struggled speaking in front of people but then one day I realised you're 65 and we're
02:55not going back so get out and do it now because you never know how long you've got to do it.
02:59I think the enjoyment that I see other people getting from it, I've said to everybody when
03:04I walk on a Monday morning and I can hear 25 or 30 voices or laughter behind me, I would
03:10say this is a successful group.
03:17Anybody can join, I did of course there, I have finished full time work.
03:23I would say it's a very good way to cushion people who have come from jobs of great responsibility,
03:31they can use their skills to run groups or to chair the organisation in various ways.
03:39Actually I think it has saved some lives because I've come across people who were in a very
03:46bad place after their spouses died and U3A has literally rescued them.
03:54So it's life changing.