Seminar On ‘Value Education In Schools On Age Care'

Indrani Rajadurai, National Director, HelpAge India, Chennai, speaking at a seminar in Coimbatore on Tuesday. HelpAge India has initiated steps to sensitise the Government to the importance of including ‘care for elders’ in the school curriculum, Indrani Rajadurai, National Director of HelpAge India, said here on Tuesday. Inaugurating a seminar on ‘value education in schools on age care,’ she said increasing urbanisation and industrialisation had led to a gradual erosion of values among children. In the rat race for professional courses, many schools didn’t have the time to impart moral values in the students, she lamented. The seminar focussed on opening discussions with principals on how they could integrate age care in their schools.

HelpAge India had been working with schools for its education-cum-fundraising programme. But, from this year, it planned to take up advocacy programmes in schools mainly on the problems of old age, the elders’ right to information and values. “We are asking schools to devote at least half an hour for moral education every day,” she said. If the Tamil Nadu Government included the concept in the regular school curriculum, children would learn to respect the aged and the country would not need so many old age homes, Ms. Rajadurai said. In this regard, the organisation had been conducting principals’ meets all over the country.

HelpAge India had engaged 53 mobile medical units across the country, including Coimbatore, for the health care needs of the elders in rural areas and slums. Every day the mobile health unit visited remote areas and provided medicines and counselling to aged people who had no access to quality healthcare. In addition to income generation programmes for them, it had also facilitated the formation of self-help groups (SHGs) among the elders.

These elders’ SHGs were provided seed money and the members could take loans from the group. In Coimbatore, more than 1,500 elders underwent free cataract surgeries every year. The Senior Citizens’ Bill, passed by the Parliament in December 2007, stated that complaint against children by an aged person could result in three years’ rigorous imprisonment followed by a fine of Rs.5,000. Committees had been formed at the State level to propagate this law so that people would refrain from ill-treating their aged relatives. “If not out of love, at least out of fear they will take care of the elders,” Ms.Rajadurai said.

In Cuddalore, the organisation had set up an elders’ village, Thamaraikulam, to rehabilitate the aged who had lost their relatives to the tsunami. More than 100 senior citizens lived there. “We are also training community social workers and volunteers who have old people at home in palliative care,” Ms.Rajadurai said. R.Ravi, principal of GRG Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Prasanna Radhakrishnan, pincipal, GKD Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Sumathy Sreedhar, principal, Nachiar Vidyalaya Matriculation School, Pollachi, and K.Sundararaman, principal, Sri Krishna Arts and Science College, were the resource persons.

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