What We Do
A Few Words On
Introduction
Humanitarian Response:
- Providing essential services like food, shelter, healthcare, and hygiene supplies.
- Advocating for the inclusion of older people in humanitarian response plans.
- Supporting older people’s associations and social affairs offices.
Development Programs:
- Promoting social protection programs, such as social pensions.
- Creating age-friendly environments in healthcare, transportation, housing, and community engagement.
- Advocating for rights-based social protection programs.
Emergency Relief:
- WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) interventions: Borehole drilling, rehabilitation of water systems, sanitation promotion, and NFI distribution.
- Livelihood support: Business skill training, cash grants, restocking support, and agricultural inputs.
- Shelter and non-food item distribution.
- Protection activities: Monitoring, case assessment, cash for protection, and GBV prevention.
- Health interventions: NCD support, eye care, epidemic response, prosthetic fitting, cleft palate repair, and mobility device support.
- Nutrition support: Malnutrition assessment, referral linkages, and nutritional support.
Development Initiatives:
- Advocacy for social protection programs.
- Promotion of age-friendly services.
- Capacity building for older people’s associations and social affairs offices.
What we do
Inclusive Humanitarian Response
In emergencies, we prioritize the needs of refugees, internally displaced persons
(IDPs), and host communities. We advocate for an inclusive response by building
capacity for older people’s associations and social affairs offices. We work to ensure
that older people have access to fresh food and offer supplementary and
therapeutic feeding for those who are malnourished.
We are striving to change the humanitarian support system, making it more
accountable and ensuring that older people are not excluded in the response by:
Working with governments and international organizations to ensure that older people are consulted, and their needs are addressed as part of all humanitarian work.
Gathering evidence about how older people are affected by crises and identifying the barriers that prevent them from getting support.
Developing approaches that show how older people’s rights can be upheld in crises.
Providing technical advice and support to humanitarian organizations on how to include older people in their work
Response to Humanitarian Crises:
Through humanitarian programs, interventions
include:
WASH Intervention
- Borehole drilling and construction
- rehabilitation of community water systems such as shallow wells
- Rehabilitation and upgrading the water system to solarization
- Construction of roof water harvestings.
- construction of household and communal latrines.
- Sanitation &Hygiene promotion
- WASH NFI distribution
- Capacity building training for the government and community workers.
- Capacity building training for Water use management.
- provision of water treatment chemicals for the community.
- Provide emergency water tracking for the communities that have water shortages.
Livelihood
- Provide business skill training for the community.
- Provide in-kind and cash grants for income generation.
- Restocking support for the pastoralist community.
- provide improved seeds and agricultural tools.
- Establish associations for income generation e.g.,Fishery Association established in Gambella.
ESNFI( Emergency Shelter and non-food items )
- Nonfood Item distribution
- Shelter construction and rehabilitation
Protection
- Conduct regular protection monitoring to identify the older people’s protection risks and referral linkages per the need.
- conduct community-based case assessments.
- cash for protection support.
- Multi-purpose cash distribution
- provide dignity kits
- community awareness-raising on the VAN, GBV, etc
- GBV prevention and referral linkages
Humanitarian Health Interventions
- Our health interventions include.
- NCD support
- Eye care campaign
- epidemic response and support e.g. COVID 19
- Prosthetic fitting
- Cleft Palate Repair
- mobility device support
- hygiene material distribution
- technical and logistical support to the government health institutions
Nutrition
- Conduct community-based malnutrition assessments for older people.
- referral linkages for the identified cases to the nutrition partner.
- nutritional support
- Advocacy workshops on older people’s malnutrition.
What we do
Development program interventions
Older people want:
- a secure income,
- access to quality health services,
- good care and support,
- to contribute and to feel connected,
- to be independent, treated with dignity and respect
- to participate equally in society.
Our development programs focus on creating the right systems, structures, and opportunities that have to be in place. We are aggressively working on:
Advocating for Rights-based social protection programs
- We advocate for social pension programs and age-friendly services in Ethiopia. We promote the development of age-friendly services in healthcare, transportation, housing, and community engagement.
- We promote the inclusion of older people in flagship social protion programs such as the provision of cash grants and developing
livelihood programs. - We work with the government to influence the development of social protect ion policies, leading to programs to support Ethiopia’s urban poor and those who live in drought-prone areas.
- We empower older people, their institutions, and like-minded organisations to advocate for their rights and voice. Our key focus is
raising awareness of older people’s rights and addressing their needs.
- We actively engage wit h policymakers makers and government agencies to advocate for supportive policies. Additionally, we build the capacity of older people and our partners through networking and fostering partnerships to enhance their collective impact.
- Intergenerational knowledge sharing We create an inclusive platform for int regenerateional discussions and knowledge sharing. It serves as a bridge between different age groups, fostering meaningful interactions and exchanging valuable insight s and experiences.
Improving Income Security
Whatever our work history, gender, disability or position in society, we all need a reliable, adequate income as we get older. With a secure income, we can contribute to our communities and have a good quality of life. Choosing how we live and support ourselves as we age is key to living with dignity. The right systems, structures and opportunities have to be in place to for this to become reality.
This includes:
- Pensions and social protection (against poverty, vulnerability and social
exclusion). - Decent work that gives a fair income, safe working conditions, equal
opportunities and treatment and, enables our personal development. - Access to financial services without discrimination and the opportunity to
start businesses.
Only 20% of older people in low-income countries receive a pension
Those who are not part of a pension scheme can be pushed further into poverty and often struggle to receive emergency relief. A fair pension system is essential to make sure that all older people are secure.
We will be working to make sure governments put systems in place that protect and promote sustainable incomes to enable us to live a good quality of life as we get older.
Health- Support healthy aging
Staying healthy and feeling your best is important at any age, and especially as we get older. Promoting healthy ageing is about maximizing everyone’s ability to continue to do the things that matter to us as we get older.
Many of us fear that ageing means an inevitable decline in our quality of life. But it does not have to be that way.
People around the world are living longer. By 2050 nearly one in five people in developing countries will be over the age of 60. Longer life expectancy is a cause for celebration, but this new reality also brings new challenges.
Healthy ageing is influenced by our physical and mental abilities. Such as our ability to walk, think, see, hear and remember. As we age, these can be affected by disease, injury or general age-related changes.
Our environment and the society in which we live also affects healthy ageing: The facilities and structures built around us, the people and relationships in our lives, the attitudes and values we and others around us hold, the opportunities available to us, and the systems and services that are there to support us.
We will support the transformations of systems and societies so that they successfully promote healthy ageing across the life course. We focus on achieving age-inclusive, universal and equitable health and care services, at the same time as taking action to address wider determinants of health.
Creating Society for all Ages
We believe that every older person should be able to face their future with confidence, reach their potential and play a full part in the society they live in. Every older person is a valued member of society who has the right, whatever their support needs, to participate in their families, communities and society, based on what is important to them.
We want to achieve a world where we are all recognised and respected as individuals, embraced equally, and treated fairly and without discrimination in older age. Promoting a society for all ages will ensure older people in their diversity feel connected and that they can participate in their communities as they wish
We live in an ageing world. By 2050, nearly one in five people in low- and middle-income countries will be over the age of 60