Older People's Voices

Older people's life stories capture the strength and resilience behind a lifetime of experience. Through these stories, older people are speaking out and we're listening.  Here is a  is a good story of an older person helping out other older people in the community:

Seventy-five-year-old Boonpeng has spent his whole life in the village of Fang in Thailand’s Pong Nam Ron sub-district. He grew up and went to school there, and eventually went to work in the fields growing crops. After retiring at the age of 65, he became leader of the older people’s association for the sub-district.

On 24 September 2011, a flood hit Boonpeng’s village Two people were killed, 58 houses were destroyed and a bridge collapsed. It was then that he got involved in disaster risk reduction, as he explained:

“In our community we have natural disasters every year, small floods and bush fires, but in 2011 we had a really bad flood and afterwards we realised we needed to do something.

“I started to think that we needed to warn people in advance. We never thought that a flood like that would happen. We haven’t had a flood like that in over 100 years.”

He worked to bring the community together, get the local authority to see the value in DRR and then develop a realistic and effective plan.Trees were planted to protect the river bank and children were taught to understand the river and the warning signs it gives if a flood is imminent. With funding from the local government, they have already begun to practise how to evacuate bedridden older people, pregnant women and children, and will share this learning with all villages in the area.

Boonpeng’s DRR efforts have been well-recognised in his country. He has been invited to speak at the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation in Bangkok to tell them what they are doing in their community.

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Source & Copyright: Help Age International