Brick 2 - Hou Dong Yu Home for Seniors
Hou Dong Yu Home, a rural residential centre for indigent Seniors, needs to install indoor toilet and washing facilities for its 12 residents. The cost is 30,000 RMB (US$4,000, €2,900, ₤2,000)
A BRAVE EXPERIMENT
Hou Dong Yu Home for Seniors is using a new approach to caring for the growing number of elderly women and men to be found among China’s rural poor. Situated in an idyllic location, the Home provided shelter to 12 women and men who have no family to support them in their old age. The residents, who all come from farming backgrounds, contribute to the home by working in the gardens and doing some of the household chores for themselves. The sheltered environment gives the residents, despite being unable to care for themselves in their own homes, a sense of purpose and the days pass quickly in familiar and not overly demanding routines. The ambulant assist with the nursing care of the bedridden, creating in this simple environment a warm and homelike feel.
China has traditionally depended on family to provide care for seniors. The reduced birth rate from the one child policy has meant that the proportion of elderly in the populations is increasing rapidly. The number of elderly, (defined by those over 60) is increasing at the rate of 3.2% a year and by 2050 will exceed more than 400 million people. With such a situation those without children, especially in the rural areas where social security systems are basic or non-existent, suffer the most. Hou Dong Yu Home is responding to their needs and doing so on a scale which allows the residents themselves to won their environment.
There is a challenge in this approach. China is going through an extraordinary period of growth with new standards in almost every area of life being adopted every day. While the pace is less marked in the country side, those wishing to deliver care of the neighbour have a duty to make sure that own standards keep pace. Built in the mid ‘90’s, Hou Dong Yu was already ahead of the game in terms of the living conditions residents might have been used too. By now, rising expectations of elderly care have made those standards seem too simple. In Hou Dong Yu, this is most obvious in the area of toilet facilities. Originally built without any indoor toilets, they were rare in the countryside at that time, the residents would have found no difficulty with the rudimentary arrangements. As the running of the Home has become more organised, the implications for health and hygiene of this overly simple arrangement has become obvious. However the Home was built on the premise of simple, stable environment and does not have the funds to invest in change.
In order to meet the health and hygiene stands that the responsible management team wishes to ensure for their residents, the Hou Dong Yu Home will, in 2008, install indoor plumbed toilets and showers in the 4 sleeping units of the facility. The intention is to allow even a wheelchair bound resident to access the toilet cum shower unit without assistance, to ensure their personal dignity. Even with such a unit, the sleeping accommodation will remain “basic” by western standards, the challenge is to improve things gradually not create a western-standard centre that owes little to local realities.
Your donation will help pay the 30,000 RMB (US$4,000, €2,900, ₤2,000) cost of this improvement. Brick’s Great Wall Appeal Guarantees that 100% of your donation will reach Hou DongYu and that we will continue to remain in contact to ensure the facility is built as expected. In this way your donation will be used to the maximum and will be another Brick in China’s Great Wall of Charity.
