Photo reportage from a field trip in Ilirska Bistrica
Women’s collective in Ilirska Bistrica
Ilirska Bistrica, February 26th 2016 – Women from Croatia, Italy, Serbia and Slovenia, participants of WONET project aiming to strengthen and network different professional women, visited today the retirement Home for elderly people in Ilirska Bistirca. The director of the Home Mrs. Nadia Vidmar gave us a reception with warm strudel and coffee. Nadia introduced us to activities and principles of the Home, where majority of employees are women – over 90%, which makes it a true women’s collective. This collective has attributes of solidarity and strong women’s sense of social justice, so employees and their family members are provided with use of various services of the Home, like fitness program or physical therapy. Professional education is also organized often and this Home enables young employed mothers to take break time for nursing their babies. This practice is rare in Balkans, as well as in Europe. In a relaxed warm atmosphere, we discussed possible ways to make old age the best age in life. This role has been taken by Univerza for the third age of life, which organizes trainings in different fields every summer (foreign languages, manual work, cultural manifestations…) designed for the pensioners as well as for the young. Univerza closely collaborates with the retirement Home and it nurtures the principle of intergenerational cooperation – during our visit, we had the opportunity to see one dancing stage play, performed to us by girls pupils from this town’s primary school. We ended our visit with a short round of the home.
How we relate to our eldest fellow citizens is the mirror reflection of how we relate to the future, and this Home for elderly people gives a bright example how to relate with love and respect to those who made our present possible.
