Taking life to a new stage
- Source: Global Times
- [11:34 May 24 2010]
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Volunteers staging a play in Caojiadu Residential Areas. Photo: Courtesy of Twelve Neighbors
Six Steps of Help
Six Steps of Help is one of these. Six Steps provides assistance to the unaided and single elderly in six areas, namely, dining, hygiene, emergency help, outings, hospitals, and also with psychological issues.
"We are a very young group so we are able to bring a vibrancy and energy to the old," said Cheng Bin, the 25-year-old team leader of a one-year project, the Six Steps of Help for the Single Elderly, launched by the Shanghai Pudong Leqi Social Service.
Hou Fengdian, 77, has been leading a solitary life in Shanghai for more than 20 years. With a divorced wife and children living in Shandong Province, his monotonous life became interesting after social workers from Leqi Social Service began visiting him at his home regularly. Hou is one among the nearly 800 single old people living in the Weifang Residential Quarter of Pudong New Area, which is a trial community of the project, Six Steps of Help.
As well as regular home visits, health consultations for the elderly are organized on a regular basis. The residential committees also encourage the younger residents to maintain contact with the older people when the volunteers of the Leqi Social Service are not around. Thus the aged are always under the protective umbrella of the young people living around them.
Volunteers of the Six Steps project are happy with just the smiles they receive from the old residents. "An old man once greeted me by claiming we were long-time friends, which made me so happy as it was akin to being accepted and being given an identity. I think this is the best reward for our work," said Fu Xiqian, Cheng's team mate.
At the beginning of the Six Steps of Help project, the social workers carried out an extensive survey involving face-to-face interviews with the elderly and then building a database of personal information and their requirements. From Cheng's own experience, the biggest need for these unaccompanied aged is mental satisfaction and psychological comfort.
