| SAGE’s Jane Haskell on reaching the vibrant LGBTQ+ community all over the country

| SAGE is a multifaceted organization dedicated to “empower[ing] LGBTQ+ elders to live openly and authentically. Its national and global work includes advocacy and policy, direct service, cultural competency training, information and referral and more. Jane Haskell (she/her/hers) is the organization’s director of impact and engagement. We talked to her about SAGEYou and SAGECollab—two of the organization’s initiatives that reach older LGBTQ+ adults where they are.

What makes SAGE different?

There are not as many opportunities and support systems for our elders as there are for youth or younger people. And I’m really passionate about helping to create that infrastructure across the country, so people have the supports that they need regardless of where they live. 

How did you come to work with older adults?

During the pandemic, I started working with the Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts, and that’s where I really started to meet elders. I started to meet transgender people who were much older than me, who had transitioned much sooner than I did. And that’s how I really saw myself aging, was getting to know other elders in the LGBTQ+ community. 

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What are the advocacy issues that are prominent right now? 

There’s a lot of issues that all aging folks are concerned about, like affordable housing, access to healthcare. When we add the LGBTQ+ identity, there’s an added layer of fear and an added layer of, Will the services that I’m seeking for aging be age appropriate? Will they understand my LGBTQ+ identity? If I go into an assisted care facility, will I be respected? Will my pronouns be respected? Will I be able to room in the gender that I live my life as, not necessarily what my sex would find at birth? 

How does SAGECollab work?

We have multiple LGBTQ senior centers in New York City, and we have one space in south Florida as well in Broward County. We started SAGE chapters across the country, but we realized that there were so many other organizations that were reaching LGBTQ+ elders. So instead of saying you have to do this to be a SAGE chapter, we now have a come-one, come-all network. If you are an LGBTQ-specific nonprofit with an aging or elder-focused program—a support group, such as information and referral, case management, advocacy, anything like that—then we want to bring you into this network. We are at 40 states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. 

How does SAGEYou complement this effort?

It’s our online resource hub specifically for LGBTQ+ elders. It is a gated platform where they have to sign up and log in. Once they do so, they have free access to exercise classes, language classes, and webinars. There’s also a resource library, the National Resource Center of LGBTQ Aging. That includes, for instance, about wanting to relocate, whether that’s I am in a state that doesn’t feel safe. I would like to go somewhere else, but I’m not sure entirely of how to do that. I have limited income. And we heard that quite a bit. So we actually created a resource guide that is very comprehensive that lists all the things you might want to think about when you are planning a move. The benefit of SAGEYou is that you can access it anywhere. This is a free resource where they can log in from their own home, feel connected to other people, get the resources that they need, attend an exercise class, attend a Spanish class from the comfort of their own home. We currently have 722 resources in our National Resource Library. 

What about just socializing?

We have something called the Lavender Lounge, which has been really successful. It’s a bimonthly support space. Sometimes they do a writing group, but it’s really just an intergenerational space to get together, talk about our identities and find support with one another.  

What kind of response do the intergenerational programs get?  

I hear two things from elders. One is: “Younger people inspire me. I love seeing young people being out and proud of how young they are and knowing who they are.” The other is: “I wish that younger people knew their history or knew what I went through.”

Is there anything else I’m not asking you about that you’d like to share?

I always like to remind folks that we are all aging. I like to reframe aging as something we are all doing every day. It’s not a moment that you get to or a destination, but it’s a process. We talk about Baby Boomers, and we talk about folks that are aging, and I also like to remind folks that in five years, all of Gen X will be in their 50s and 60s, and millennials start to turn 50 in 2031. So we’re only five years away from that, which means we have a very large population of out LGBTQ+ people who are aging. So this issue and this conversation is only going to get more relevant. And I just encourage folks to rethink and reframe about how they think about aging because it doesn’t have to be scary. We can do it together.