Catalina Santana Castellanos

Catalina elevates older adults' life purpose and ensures their economic security through employment. She promotes a narrative change where longevity is positive and not pejorative for society. This is achieved through research about the older population’s reality, the materialization of incentives in public policies, and support tools for private companies to comply with regulations concerned with the integration of older adults into the labor force.

Catalina is working jointly in inter-institutional and inter-sectoral alliances to create training programs focusing on productive tools for older people, thanks to which older adults are now considered for the design and implementation of the national education curriculum under the control of the National Learning Service (SENA).

Initially, her efforts were directed toward the collection of data about the country’s elderly population, a field largely unexplored. The aim of this research was mainly to establish the foundation of her innovative education program, and at the same time, to launch the Old Age Observatory, the first of its kind in Colombia, and which has turned into the few reliable sources of complete information about this etary group in the country.

Her training programs have influenced a change in mindsets in the public spaces of the Mayor Bogotá Daycare Centers, Transition Centers, and Foundations for elderly care in Colombia, reaching approximately 1.500 older adults, allowing them to renew their skills and self-perceptions. But Catalina’s work extends to other actors, who are necessary for a shift in the way society understands longevity. Through the years, her work has gained enough credibility and legitimacy to allow her to influence the creation of Law 2040, a legislation that offers incentives to companies that hire older adults at a national level. New values underlie this effort, which promotes a dignified view of older individuals, giving them the opportunity to enter the job market. Catalina is convinced that such understanding is necessary to shift from seeing older adults as burdens and start recognizing their lifelong contributions. She realizes that the focus on the work dimension of longevity is key because it gives older adults a sense of purpose and importantly, it improves their health and well-being.

To achieve this, Catalina has partnered with companies to help them to comply with the regulations but also show them the benefits of incorporating the growing elderly population that wishes to continue working. She answered this demand and created a set of three programs that provide them with certification to offer training and influence corporate policies and values. This action sets a precedent in Colombia and serves as an example for the rest of Latin America.

Colombia has seen a recent increase in life expectancy; for women, it has risen by 5.9 years and for men, 5.1 years. This suggests that by 2045, Colombia will become an aging society characterized by a rapidly decreasing birth rate and an extended life cycle. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that "between 2015 and 2030, the population aged 60 and over will rise from 900 million to more than 1.4 billion people." This 64% increase in just 15 years will significantly impact low and middle-income countries like Colombia.
  
In this context, Colombia is home to approximately 7,108,000 individuals over 60 years of age. However, only 26% of them have access to a pension. The remaining 74% are either financially dependent on their relatives or live in extreme poverty, indicating a substantial pension gap1. By 2045, the generational replacement for jobs in Colombian society will continue to decrease. It's important to note that depression, often triggered by unemployment or feelings of redundancy in later life, is the third most common reason for medical attention among Colombians aged 60 and over.
  
Historically, Colombia has lagged in protecting the human rights of its aging population. It wasn't until 2020 that it joined the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of the Elderly. Following this, the Ombudsman's Office shifted its focus from "welfare" to "guarantee of rights." Subsequently, in 2021, the Congress of the Republic began processing Law 2040, which encourages the employment of older individuals at retirement age. The law aims to promote the employment of those without a pension, fostering economic self-sufficiency and autonomy, and thereby ensuring an active, satisfying, and healthy aging process for the Colombian population.

Catalina identified that job inclusion and access to sustainable sources of income are key issues for older people’s life quality. She knew this firsthand when the labor market neglected her mother, a 60+ professional, after an accident that affected her both emotionally and physically. This challenging and heartbreaking experience revealed that older people suffer not only from feeling excluded from society once they reach a certain age, but that this exclusion has critical consequences for their well-being.

Catalina’s strategy is based on an understanding of the problem of older people's exclusion from social and economic life from three facts: 1) the limited research in this field, therefore a lack of reliable data showing the reality of the elderly population, 2) the generalized notion of older people as passive and vulnerable individuals who have to be taken care of and who want to retire from work and social life, and 3) the lack of updated public policy that considers people are living longer and are willing and capable of being lifelong contributors to society.

She founded 101 Ideas in 2016 and started to research the elderly situation more deeply and then started sharing the findings with different actors interested in the issue. She was supported by Plan Mayor, a coalition of 3 founders and shared the findings with allied organizations working with the elderly population. Data generation is an instrument in Catalina’s strategy and diffusion, which she channels through the Old Age Observatory. Catalina is the founder and current Director of the Observatory, established as a research center focused on mapping the situation of older people, reporting trends and challenges while creating and disseminating knowledge on the most urgent matters. Under Catalina's leadership, systematic and strategic studies are carried out, both quantitative and qualitative, on the reality of the elderly population, whose results are used by civil society organizations and companies to learn about the senior segment, design and carry out training programs, and innovate in business practices, as well as to promote policy change. She also holds periodic meetings with international experts for the exchange of work lines and research, targeted to events and meetings with organizations that require data and information on the senior segment of Colombia.

Through the collaborations in generating data, she became a reference in the field and was invited to work on policy change. Catalina's research results were instrumental in the formulation of Law 2040 in 2020, and she served as a member of the law's commission, which marked a turning point in Colombian history for recognizing older people's rights. Law 2040 establishes mechanisms to incentivize hiring older people at retirement age and thus covering the pension "gap". Through the law, companies can deduct from income tax 120% of the value of salaries and social benefits paid to senior employees during taxable years, in which the employee remains. Catalina aims to promote this achievement as an example to other Latin American countries that have not established such legal frameworks.

Catalina’s programs are built around the experience of working with older people and the results of her research. She found that in Colombia 74% of people do not have access to a pension, and even though they are in retirement age, they are willing to work. Through her early work in vulnerable communities, she identified a group of approximately 40 women who personified this finding, and so Catalina started an initiative she called "Makers" that operated as a decentralized workshop where women produced knitted handicrafts that they then sold to partner organizations. This initiative, which is ongoing, exposed her to the reality of exclusion and lack of opportunities faced by these women, that she experienced during her mother’s accident.

A key limitation of the inclusion of older people in work life is the predominant view of older people needing care and being passive. While this is still valid for a segment of the older population, there is a portion of older people who can and want to engage in paid and unpaid work. In 2022, Catalina and her team at the Old Age Observatory conducted a study of public daycare centers in the effort of an intersectoral alliance in partnership with the Office of Bogota’s Mayor through its Old Age Department. Catalina and her team discovered that in these daycare centers –that serve around 18.000 people – there were groups of older people who were caregivers for others in the centers. Through this experience, she knew that older people need care but were willing also to be caregivers. This led to the creation of a training program in caregiving to older people interested in renewing their skills and self-perceptions in addition to having a purpose and another source of income. At the same time, inadvertently, this initiative also changed the mentality of the team at the day care centers towards a view of older adults as contributors instead of passive recipients of services. So far, 1,000 caregivers have been trained nationwide with the endorsement of the National Learning Service (SENA), which allowed her to expand Old Age Department strategies to provide greater independence for older people and fewer welfare actions. She expects to reach close to 2.1 million people, or 30% of Colombian older people, in the next three years, through this training in all territories of Colombia thanks to her solid relationship with the National Learning Service (SENA). In fact, given the good results, conversations are ongoing with other mayors’ offices to expand the program, with a second edition planned for 2023. Recently, caregivers have started forming cooperatives that allow them to organize better and be more efficient in offering their services and managing their earnings.

Catalina’s efforts in generating data as a powerful tool for uncovering the reality of older people and breaking down perceptions about them are at the core of the design of her strategic moves. She realized that she needed to dedicate her work to both, the demand side and the offer side. The Law she has contributed to has prepared the terrain for companies and other organizations to hire senior talent, so it made sense to her to work on fine-tuning that talent through upskilling programs targeted at older people and connecting them to senior professionals that encourage them to enter the labor market. She is doing that through the Digital Seniors Program, teaching digital tools for entrepreneurship and employability to over 500 older adults. Scholarships for this program are available for older people interested in learning about current digital tools with the aim of obtaining employment, selling products or services, or communicating with loved ones. The applications for the scholarship – which consists of the program fee exemption – come through nominations from Catalina's allies and professional network of around 15.000 people, like Alzheimer's Family Action Foundation and elderly caregivers of children nominated by the Keralty Foundation. In the management of applications, preference is given to older people who are also caregivers because care services are in high demand as recent reports show.

To reach a larger group of older adults with her initiatives, she establishes alliances with the main foundations that house older adults, like the Council of Wise Men and Women of Bogotá, and the Transit Centers, as well as allies working with and for older adults such as Minuto de Dios University, Colombian Association for Active and Dignified Aging, Alzheimer Family Action Foundation, Colombian Geriatrics Association, the Old Age Plan Group, among others.

Looking ahead, Catalina wants to promote and enforce the application of Law 2040 in companies. By doing this, she promotes a widespread shift in the understanding of older people's capabilities and the integration of older people into work life and ensures older people's well-being and financial security. Motivated by this, Catalina, with the advice of experts from the Old Age Observatory, has developed a set of three programs that she calls “The ABC of Ageneutral companies”. The ABC of Ageneutral companies is the multiprogram methodology that certifies companies under the AgeNeutral badge, which is a certification for companies that Catalina is in the process of validating and registering with the local official government agency (in Spanish: Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio).

The certification seeks to help companies create what she calls Ageneutral environments, which are characterized by intergenerational teams, the value of senior professionals’ experience, and the promotion of the right to economic safety and social security benefits of older people. Catalina catalyzes Ageneutral environments through team awareness processes, leadership training for age management (i.e., management practices that incorporate and value the diversity of age in the workplace), and support in retirement processes.

Catalina's strategic work with companies has promising scaling prospects thanks to her active participation in the UN Global Compact Colombia edition, where she is the leader of the strategic line of aging, old age, and age inclusion. Notably, the United Nations Global Compact in its Colombia edition, gathers the 50 most representative companies in Colombia that promote the development of sustainable objectives and human rights, shaping industries and institutionalizing corporate practices. This collective considered the issue of inclusion of older adults for the first time influenced by Catalina’s dissemination and narrative change actions. She has already reached out to a number of companies from this collective, such as Ecopetrol, Sura, EPM, the Association of Banks of Honduras, Presidentex, and Nethunting, who positively received Catalina’s invitation to participate in the ABC of Ageneutral companies. Through this strategic move, she aims to reach the older population that is part of their employee base, as well as the young generation and leaders of these companies. 

Catalina grew up in a loving family environment. From a very young age, she learned from her father, a businessman, the sense of leadership and justice, and above all the importance of generating well-being for others. Her family was marked by the history of her paternal grandfather, who despite death threats and extortion from violent groups, and the death of his son when he delivered the ransom for his kidnapping, maintained his desire to work the land and moved to territories less affected by violence. Her grandfather became an inspiration, from him she learned the sense of work and how it dignifies and transforms tragedy into values of effort, temperance, and union. Unfortunately, at the age of 10, Catalina and her family experienced death threats and extortion from urban guerrillas seeking funding for their illegal activities. Although they considered leaving the country, their love for Colombia overcame the fear they were subjected to. All this gives Catalina courage and a sense of living in a country free from violence.

From her mother, Catalina learned to appreciate and respect people’s vulnerability, unconditional love, and the spirit of overcoming. Her mother became the inspiration for her programs, as after experiencing a traumatic event that affected her physical and emotional health, she abruptly withdrew from her social and work life, believing that at “her age” (60 years old) she no longer had reasons to live. This event in her mother’s life marked a before and after in Catalina. It was then in 2016 when 101 Ideas Colombia emerged, a project that seeks to dignify and redefine work (in line with her grandfather’s teachings), promote productivity and employability to improve people’s quality of life (inspired by her father) and focused on the elderly population, who suffer discrimination due to their age, providing them with a sense of purpose and motivation to live (based on her mother’s experience).

Catalina graduated as an industrial designer and became involved in market research to recognize the needs of customers. This provided her with skills for research and recognition of people’s needs beyond the mere commercial sense. Hence one of her contributions has been research on older adults in Colombia and the creation of the 1st Older Adult Observatory. Catalina’s work has received important and multiple recognitions. Despite her age, her career has led her to be recognized as a leader in Latin America in the New Longevity field.