Afternoon of friendship and new beginnings

Goodverse Foundation is reshaping Dhaka’s social landscape with a festival for seniors that is less about charity and more about companionship.

When the invite landed, I felt joy and relief -- finally, a way to keep my 79‑year‑old teenage mother’s energy channelled. Dhaka has long needed to treat its elders with meaning. To label them “retired” and consign them to neglect and silence is cruel, especially when the age gap between my mother and me is so narrow; if you know what I mean.

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So, when Goodverse Foundation, through its Goodverse Club 60 initiative, in association with Gulshan Society, invited golden agers to Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed Park on August 22 from 2:30pm to 6:30pm, I was thankful that my thoughts found resonance and were translated into action.

The lush Gulshan 2 park will come alive with tea, retro music, stories, and the promise of new friendships. Designed to be light and celebratory, it offers four hours where seniors can reconnect, share memories, and feel a sense of belonging.

For Nasreen Murshid Elora, vice chairman of Goodverse Foundation, the idea comes from lived experience. Having cared for her father and father‑in‑law through dementia, she saw how isolation weighs heavier than illness. “After my father passed away, I kept thinking about how lonely elderly people are, with no one to talk to or spend time with,” she says. Her vision is not of an old‑age home, but of a club‑like space where seniors can gather and feel part of a community.

That vision dovetails with Goodverse Club 60. As SM Al Mahmud, founder and secretary general of Goodverse Foundation & Children’s Heaven Trust, explains, “We weren’t thinking about poverty or financial crisis -- we were thinking about loneliness. For many parents, an afternoon of conversation may matter more than another health camp. If even a few people find new friends, if regular gatherings happen, if someone mentors, shares stories, or comes for tea -- that too is impact.”

I imagine my mother, once a kindergarten teacher, reading nursery rhymes to children, reviving the tradition of grandparents as storytellers. I shudder to think of a Dhaka where no one tells our children the fairy tales of Shuyo Rani Duyo Rani, Shaat Bhai Chompa, or Bhombal Das. These stories, whispered from Thakurmar Jhuli or retold in Siddiqui’s playful prose, are bridges between generations. To neglect our elders is to silence the voices that keep our cultural imagination alive.

The idea of keeping elders engaged struck me while watching a Korean Netflix series, where seniors are recruited into flexible, small‑scale jobs -- from community caretaking to part‑time retail -- to keep them active and connected. It made me think of my mother, fluent in teaching toddlers to write the alphabet with strokes and dots, carrying a wealth of playful activities to keep children occupied. Yet all of that knowledge lies locked away, unused, because retirement closed the door on her experience.

This first afternoon event dedicated to our elders is therefore praiseworthy and thought‑provoking.

The Foundation’s dual focus -- on both young and old -- runs through its work. Through its association with Children’s Heaven Trust in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the team has installed solar powered water wells in water‑scarce areas and supported education for children who walk miles to class. The idea is not to separate generations but to connect them, so that seniors and children enrich each other’s lives.

For SM Al Mahmud, the principle is clear: dignity must be at the centre. Whether through OrphanGive, which protects children’s privacy while enabling support, or through gatherings that ease loneliness, Goodverse Foundation insists that helping someone should never mean diminishing them. The organisation also refuses to be donation‑dependent, aiming instead to build value through social business, training, research, and innovation programmes -- profits flowing back into impact.

Together, the team at Goodverse Foundation is sketching a new model of care: one that sees people not as beneficiaries but as human beings with layered needs. If someday someone looks at a project and says, “This was thought about a little differently,” both Elora and Mahmud will know they are on the right path.

Behind Goodverse, chaired by Dr. Musharraf Hussain, is a diverse team -- doctors, entrepreneurs, professionals, young voices, and community members -- all at the same table. Problems are complex, and solutions need perspectives that cut across age, profession, and background.

Alongside entertainment, there will be health support -- blood pressure checks, consultations, and medical offers. Goodverse Foundation is guided by one shared idea: that social work must go beyond poverty and touch the human need for connection.