Click here to register your event online.

via COTA Tasmania | The Voice of Older Tasmanians.

via COTA Tasmania | The Voice of Older Tasmanians.

Welcome to Cota Tasmania!  We are excited to bring you our newly established website.

We hope you find it easy to access.  This new platform will enable us to communicate with you, a very diverse group of people and interests. We have moved to a technological era which has so many ways of connecting us all and enabling people to express views, share ideas and inform us about the many interests and issues you want us to hear, and in turn we can ensure your voices are heard in all the right places.

We look forward to hearing from you and informing you of all the news and views on matters of interest to you. Make sure if you have something to share or something you want to know about, visit us here.

This is also the first year that we have held Seniors Week. This year Seniors Week is being held from 1-7 October 2011. Registrations are now open for organisations hosting Seniors Week events.  Please register your event here.  We encourage you to be part of this wonderful week.

We look forward to sharing our developments and opportunities with you via our new site.

Best wishes,

Maxine Griffiths AM
CEO, COTA Tasmania

Doing yoga.. and loving it!

Membership is the lifeblood of any people-before-profit organisation and this is no exception at COTA Tasmania. A committed, capable and growing membership enables us to become a stronger and more sustainable organisation and to provide more programs and services. Importantly, it also allows us to be more persuasive when lobbying Government, the business sector and the community in general for better outcomes for older Tasmanians.

In order to increase our focus on existing individual members and to grow our membership, COTA Tasmania is pleased to announce that a new business unit, COTA Member Services (CMS), has been created. CMS’ sole purpose is to not only attract new individual members but to continually enhance the value we provide existing members – so they want to stay as members. Establishing COTA Member Services is an important outcome for COTA.

As Chief Executive Officer, Michael Mezzino will lead this new area and bring extensive experience in developing and growing member-based organisations. With a team dedicated to looking after our individual members, many exciting changes will be noticed which will include expanding the range of benefits that we provide exclusively to our members.

Types of surface area, grab rails, interior colour schemes, level entry showers and impact absorbent floors are all addressed as ways of designing safer home for Australians. With one in three Australians experiencing a fall at least once a year COTA believes this reminder is a good step towards ensuring there is greater consideration for the impact building design has on older Tasmanians in the community. For more information visit www.archicentre.com.au.

People become members of COTA for different reasons. For some, it’s to have their opinions and concerns heard when COTA informs and influences Government, the business sector and the community.

For lots of our members, it’s to access the many exclusive benefits provided through the COTA Rewards & Savings Program. Many tell us it’s because COTA can help them lead an active & healthy lifestyle and for others, it’s to support COTA and the work it does.

So whatever your motivation for becoming a member, COTA wants to say thank you.

A growing and engaged membership also allows COTA to benefit in so many ways.  It provides us with a:

• Better understanding of what people want, guiding our advocacy work
• Critical mass of people to represent
• Source of volunteers, and
• Increased capacity to offer more information, support and services

If your membership is due for renewal, we encourage you to do so. Renew your membership here.

Why not recommend to your family and friends that they also become members. After you finish reading ONECOTA, why not pass it on to them. They’ll learn all about COTA and the many benefits they can receive. You could even give COTA membership as a gift.

It will be looking at the diversity of the care networks of lesbian and gay people aged 60 and over, and how care providers respond to these persons’ sexual identity. The research involves interviews with the older lesbian or gay person, as well as their paid and unpaid carers.

The COTA Champions in the Southern Midlands and Huon Valley worked closely with COTA in late 2010 in eliciting input from their local communities into the 10 year review of Tasmania Together. One of the tasks for the COTA Champions in the first half of 2011 is to explore with older people strategies to encourage social inclusion and connectedness in their local communities. COTA will soon be recruiting COTA Champions in the Hobart and Clarence municipalities and would like to hear from people keen on championing the rights and interests of older people in their local community.

If you wish to find out more about the COTA Champions, please contact us via email admin@cotatas.org.au or phone (03) 6231 3265

With that in mind COTA is now proud to be able to offer members the exclusive benefit of mobile phones made specifically for older people.

COTA mobile phone

The phones are unlocked and as such are able to be used with all existing GSM SIM cards. The phones also come with unique features such as larger tactile buttons, easy to read screen and numbers, hearing aid compatible and a digital number announcer.

The phone also holds a specially built-in ‘SOS’ feature which calls four pre-programmed phone numbers when the SOS button is pushed. If none of the numbers answer the call, the phone automatically calls the emergency services and the speaker phone activates. If still no voice is detected by the person in distress the phone sends an SMS message saying “Emergency call, please call me!”

For more information and to order the phone visit www.cotamembership.org.au
or call 1300 1400 50.