Older people learning to care for each other in Haiti’s Camps, two years on
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In these two years, we have all read about the challenges the people of the country face: poverty, political uncertainty, and violence. In this new year, urban camp life remains a daily reality of 2012 for thousands without any other place to go.
In 2010, with the support of HelpAge USA's donors, HelpAge mobilized a disaster response team to address the immediate needs of older people in emergency camps for food, water, and medicine. But it also responded to older people's less visible, but no less urgent needs for mental health care in the wake of trauma and psychosocial support.
We asked Derith Mottershaw, an 86-year old resident of Oregon, what motivated her to support HelpAge's work in Haiti: "I am ‘low-income' but I like to help because there are worse people off than I am. I know that the elderly are often not looked after. It is downright shameful." Caring for others is a life-affirming process, she says. Grandparents all over the world care for their grandchildren when adult children move away to work or succumb to HIV/AIDS, and Ms. Mottershaw wants to see them supported.
Part of HelpAge's response was to teach older people to support each other. Stephanie Citron, a psychologist, trained older nurses and older home-based carers to be employed by HelpAge as caseworkers to care for the oldest old and older people with disabilities. She equipped them with skills to combat post-traumatic stress disorder, helping them to help themselves and others.
Dr. Citron is currently preparing for her third training trip. We caught up with her on the eve of the anniversary of the earthquake: "This program gives people with no money something to give. It gives them a skill." In all, she has trained trainers who have gone on to train hundreds of others in techniques to control traumatization and to promote mental health. Never before had she been so moved by human resiliency. "You just have to think about how many people are so alive and grateful." Over 10,000 people in the camps were over the age of 60 in 2010. Many still remain.
We asked her what she thought older people in countries outside of Haiti would want to know about her experience. She described how committed grandparents are to their grandchildren. She described older people in rags, beaming with pride in their grandchildren's education when they drop them off at school in starched white shirts with fresh ribbons in their hair. In the face of years of hardship and loss, "Grandmothers and grandfathers make it happen. It just takes your breath away."
Thank you to all of those who have supported HelpAge's efforts in Haiti. Thousands of older people are living their lives with health and sense of purpose because of you!