07.02 Golden Time for Silver Age Volunteers at the Olympic Games

SOCHI, February 6 (by Kevin O'Flynn for RIA Novosti) – If you are in Sochi for the Winter Olympics this month, you may notice elderly men and women telling foreign visitors where to see the sights in town, manning the areas where events will be shown on big screens or even filling empty seats at Olympic events if needed.

They are all part of Leonid Lyubimov's Silver Age volunteer group, which started up three years ago and now has more than 500 members.

The group, with members aged between 46 and 85, organizes from 35 to 40 events a month, from helping to clear waterways of trash to cleaning local landmarks and fixing up badly planted trees.

“People usually feel that the elderly need to be helped, but we decided to do the reverse. We help ourselves, organize ourselves,” said Lyubimov, an energetic, gray-haired 71-year-old, in an interview in the small office where he sits with his two deputies in downtown Sochi.

Now retired, Lyubimov spent most of his professional life at a scientific institute in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, but always dreamed of moving somewhere warm. He had maps of Crimea on his wall, almost moved to Cyprus, but eventually plumped for Sochi.

When Sochi was chosen as the venue for the Winter Olympics, he said it provided a push to start the volunteer movement: “It is interesting for us to live in a city where the Olympic Games will take place.”

The Silver Age volunteers all remember the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, he said, adding: “To live through that was great but to see another such event is super.”

He is particularly proud that the group was created from the grassroots rather than by government command, although Silver Age gets support from the city and local legislators.