COVID-19-Support for Elderly : Kolkata Initiatives

Project Title: Women’s Community Center – Kolkata Initiatives

Project Summary: This project has helped established 5 Women's Community Centers (WCC) which serves women in slums of Kolkata, India. These WCCs have a) Seniors Day Care b) Activity centre for Adolescent girls and provide c) Meeting space for women's groups. The growing populations of elderly women face a life of neglect and loneliness. Adolescent girls have few opportunities beyond the cycle of hardship, discrimination and violence. This project is trying to create both hope and opportunities for women of different ages.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge? Women over the age of 60 come to the Seniors’ Day Care Center and build community with other senior women. Kolkata Initiatives supports work with women and girls across different age groups – elderly women, adult women and adolescent girls.

Explain how the project has reached expected outcomes or goals with the funds raised

There are a total of 5 centers in 4 slums, namely, Shahid Smriti, Jhorobasti, Panchanantola, and K.P Roy Lane (Kheyali Sangha), this particular center is new and has been opened in this quarter. 4 Seniors’ Day Care Centre has 30 participants, the 5^th one in K.P. Roy Lane has a total of 20 participants as it’s a new center. There are 2 centers in Shahid Smriti. In the past 3 months there have been a total of 127 sessions at the Seniors’ Day Care Centers and 3242 packets of nutritional support have been distributed. 3 Health clinics and 1 medical camp were conducted. Health clinics are primarily focused to check the health status of the women who visit the day care centre. In those said health clinics two to three doctors from different discipline check the women to screen their health related conditions. In the medical camp 10-12 doctors come and screen the people from entire community as the medical camp is open for the entire community.

Four (4) meetings of women, mainly domestic workers, were held in the community centers. In those meetings discussion were held about the social security provided by the Government. The women also discussed about the history and background of International Domestic Worker’s day and it’s importance which is on 16^th of June. Issues related to wage and Minimum Wage for the domestic workers were also discussed.

There were 8 Aikido sessions with adolescent girls. Aikido is a Japanese martial art.

Along with this 2 advisory committee meetings have been held, one in Shahid Smriti and the other one in Jhorobasti.  The advisory committee in Jhorobasti has been formed in this quarter and the members of the advisory committee were from among the existing women’s group, members from local club and representative from Slum development committee. The advisory committee met once and discussed about the services provided through the day care centre for the elderly. They also shared their opinion about it’s improvement.

Potential Long-Term Impact: Enable elderly women to overcome feelings and situations of loneliness and isolation. The camp has also helped in bringing awareness in their household.  Adolescent girls develop self – confidence and self-esteem and are able to make decisions about their future, and the Aikido sessions develop self protection skill. Women’s solidarity is strengthened, they are getting aware of their legal rights and they are able to demand their rights.

Case Study:  Jaimala, she is 68 years old, she has been staying in Shahid Smriti for since the start of the colony which was almost 41 years now, she has 4 sons and 1 daughter, all of them are married and she lives with her children. Jaimala used to sell vegetables on a small van but due to her age she couldn’t continue her work and started to run a small tea- shop in her colony. The plot that she lives in now was allotted to her husband; he passed away 5 years ago, now she is the owner of the land.

Jaimala had developed a tumor under her right ear, when she visited the center she was asked to do a doctors checkup, she later went to a homeopathy doctor near her colony; it did not help and the tumor continued to grow. When the health camp was conducted the doctors did a through checkup and referred to a Government hospital in the city, as she was old and alone she was not capable of going to the doctor, on the 2^nd health camp she was referred again and she finally went to a hospital with her neighbor and she has now gone through a surgery and now she is well and healthy and her reports are good, she is coming for her last checkup in the next health Clinic.