WOOPs and Sister Monica Landy
An innovator and a constant challenger of the status quo, Sister Monica Landy was behind the first senior summer camp in the Wairarapa for single older people who had never had a chance to go away for a holiday.
At the camp, a group of seniors was taken for an outing in the back of a ute for a drive across a paddock. They came back unexpectedly covered in cow dung but very happy.
Sister Monica laughed when recalling that incident.
Her tireless work in helping others drove the establishment of WOOPs, the Wairarapa Organisation for Older Persons, which has celebrated its 25th anniversary.
The retired teacher was still in her prime when the project to improve the lives of older people was launched with the Golden Years expo.
Thousands walked through the doors to see what was on offer.
“The slogan was Life and leisure for later living - we wanted to showcase to older people what could be done for them by society and various communities,” says Sister Monica.
“It was quite an outstanding success. We had 8,000 or so walking through the doors of the stadium, and it really set the tone, or woke up [others]. We created an awareness that our older people and our older consumers really mattered.”
Next came the seniors’ drop-in centre at 10 Dixon Street in Masterton.
“It was lovingly called 10 Downing Street,” she says.
“At the time, the regional council offices were revamping so I asked the district council could we have carpet and stuff to furnish the house which we did.
“It became a real centre because it was where the foot traffic was, down near the park.”
Through Other Eyes
Many years ago, WOOPS also brought the “Through Other Eyes” workshop to New Zealand from Canada.
The workshop, which was staged in most major centres around the country, showed people what it could be like to be older by putting on gear which hampered eyesight and reduced mobility.
Sister Monica says the aim was to increase awareness of the issues.
“It was a youth-oriented consumer society and the ageing population was increasing around the world so we needed to be prepared for that.
“This targeted the producers, manufacturers, the developers, the planners, the community service groups that were, or could, become senior-minded because everything stopped at age 32.
“And we needed to say to them that there was life after 32.”
Life can be very busy for many older people as they pack their days contributing as volunteers, holding down shifts in paid work or pitching in to help with the care of grandchildren.
Sister Monica says there needs to be a greater awareness of the value and worth, and respect for older people because they hold the wisdom of the years.
She says her grandparents lived with them and they got used to having older people around.
“The present generation have not grown up with older people around them.”
The long-time WOOPs member says grandparents can provide stability in a constantly evolving society although she is not advocating a return to inter-generational living arrangements as she believes there have been too many changes for it to work easily.
Challenging the status quo
Evolution and change were also the driving forces behind the projects WOOPs undertook.
“We challenged the status quo, we challenged older people to do things a bit differently, we challenged older people to live life to the full,” says Sister Monica.
She believes the new generation of older people will live like that.
“I think the baby boomers are going to do that because they’ve come out of a different world from those who are 80 on. They grew up in a different world.
“Baby boomers have worked, they have been out there in society whereas previous older people were homemakers. There’s a huge stretch between the two in the sense of what baby boomers will be for the future of their age group.”
Sister Monica believes in grabbing the opportunities that turn up, and is happy to be described as an innovator and challenger.
“I suppose I’m an organiser and a motivator and an encourager.
“If you don’t say something or do something, the situation will go on repeating itself.”
In many ways, Sister Monica is the embodiment of her motto “live life to the full”.
