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Malawi: Group walks 50 km to raise funds for elderly
By
Moses Michael-Phiri Malawi
Nation, June 30, 2003 Malawi - Friends of Namilongo elderly people’s group on Saturday walked a record-breaking distance of 50 kilometres from Namadidi Turn Off (Seveni Mailosi) in Zomba to Limbe in an effort to raise funds to buy blankets for the elderly. The group’s financial adviser, Janet Chiomba Phiri, said in an interview they had organised the big walk to buy some warm clothing and blankets for over 210 elderly people being cared for by the group, which is based near Changalume in Zomba. “On May 10 the group discovered that one elderly person died in the night due to cold weather. We felt so sad because this person was not even sick. We felt we should have saved the life of this elderly person and it is this reason that we thought of coming up with this big walk to raise funds so that this sort of thing never happens again,” she said. Chiomba Phiri said they expected to raise K150,000 from the big walk but only managed to get K10,000, most of it in pledges. “We, therefore, want to appeal to various organisations to assist these elderly people otherwise to lose them in such a way is quite painful, especially to orphans who are being looked after by some of these old people. The little money that we have raised will be used on buying warm clothing [and blankets] for a start,” Phiri said. A volunteer for the group Bertha Donni said Namilongo elderly people’s group started with 75 elderly people in around 1999 but now cares for over 210. “The
problem has always been finances because we have a number of projects that
we want to embark on but we have shortfalls. The Elderly People’s
Association (EPA) stopped giving us assistance some time back so it is
making our job to care for these people very difficult,” she said. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
