Program Evaluation Report
Organisation: Save The Aged (STA) Myanmar.
Reporter: Win Thu Mon
Identified the needs of the community
Life has a finite time. Time passes instantly and does not wait for anybody. Everybody passes time and gets old. One day we too will be old. The old people have not done well and feel depressed and anxious for rest of their life. The old people who are elderly aged and in the troubled aged care system are once again being short changed by the communities' lack of policies and procedures in the day to day aspects of their lives. Nowadays, Myanmar community meets great challenge with aged care systems.The country's aged rate rose from 6.4 percent in 1983 to 7.98 percent in 2001 and to 8.33 percent in 2006.In Myanmar; it is the custom that elderly people live with their family. Some elderly people do not have families taking care of them. Others have family but are not earning enough to care for elderly grandparents. Myanmar earliest Buddhist Home for Aged People was built in 1915 at "Min Koon", Mandalay region. At present, Although Myanmar has several homes for aged people, their activities are not enough for the demand or the community needs.Many Myanmar's seniors are struggling to feed themselves and have poor health care. Most of Myanmar senior peoples need high requirements to access the aged care facilities.
Address a diverse range of the community
Myanmar's new generations do not disregard what their community wants. They address the need of Myanmar community such as age care with home care system. Thus, "Save the Aged" was formed at 2010 January 3th with (15) members and encourages participation based on online stimulation.
Aim and objects of the STA
STA aims and objects are caring elderly people who live with low income and who do not have a carer. STA introduced social work based age care activities which stimulate youth to get involved in community services for the Myanmar Community.STA aims to care for the Myanmar seniors who do not have care and provide the members with love and sympathy as our real parents. STA intends to share knowledge and activities of members such as a team work to address the needs of Myanmar environment.
STA polices are as follow: 1 Not related to political parties.
2. Not for individual profit.
3. Not to discriminate religions and colour.
These policies are intended to involve of all Myanmar's community because Myanmar is a Multicultural country and has 135 nationalities and freedom of religions. Moreover, political reason may impact on organisation trend and may be holding up organisation trends.
STA slogan is to have a nice day for aged people was supported by STA. The future of the STA depends on love, sharing, empathy and members contributions. At present, STA provides (19) seniors for the rest of their lives. Moreover, STA donated to age care centres and is involved in other communities' activities such as blood donations, water donations as monthly activities.
Organisation structure
Currently, STA has (2212) members and a sub group as a strong involvement members group, Part time volunteers groups, Distance members group, overseas member group, Planning Group, Record for donation Group and information & communication group. In the strong involvement member group (213) members are involved and provide money and are the main sponsors for the group. Also Part- time volunteer groups provide others social work based on age care activities. For example: involvement as volunteers for donation at age care centres. Overseas members are member who live in overseas and this group has 67 members. Some members who live overseas are working as an agent for collection of donation money. Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan, Russia, UAE and USA have agents. Planning group do the plan for activities and have 15 members. For example: At the event of donation to monk for activities for their Myanmar seniors, they plan for these seniors transportation, donations to monks, who greet the group members who come to these events. They also have responsibilities for recording donation and keeping income (donation money) and expense (donated money) and announced budget to all of Members. Information & Communication group updates information to members and receives advice and discusses with members.
Now STA is doing (3) programs as warm activities for seniors, home –care programs and donation to other community needs. Warm activities for seniors prevent loneliness and depression and involve the community work and help at special occasions of Myanmar. Home- care programs are intended to provide care for seniors by a weekly selected group. Donation to other community needs is required for members' participation.
Support and advocacy for the program
STA depends on the sponsorship of the member's .They collecting monthly members' fees and donations from the community. All of the staff are volunteers who give their individual knowledge, skill and experience to STA. STA holds the monthly meetings which discuss and evaluate the program. Moreover, Information & Communication group takes advice from the individual opinions of the members and advocacy for programs and distributes up to date information to all members such as those who received donation from overseas members, monthly balance of income and expenses, invitation to members for next donations.
Awareness of the value of teamwork and collaborative effort
Teamwork activities are essential STA. STA has developed structures for members to work together to achieve a goal of STA. STA has more than two thousand members so that creates common goals in the organisation by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. The specifically benefit of group effort is to gain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources. Team relationship requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and open group. Consequently, STA awards certain roles effort to individual responsibilities and particular tasks. Besides, particular positions also require a knowledge and understanding of organisational rules, and skill in rule interpretation and application.
Examine the program's effectiveness in achieving its stated goals
Within the official structure of STA, team members in certain positions can be faced with aspects of structure that impact service to elderly persons, adequate participation in decision-making, practice and other desired value and they attempt to modify existing structures or build a new structure. For example: For monthly donation to other community needs programs is a new structure that is referred to the aims of STA as 'stimulate youth to get involved in community services for communities'. This program is proof that STA finds themselves in situations where they are and they modify their organisation by addressing the community needs and intention to achieving its stated goals.
Issue raised in relation
STA has more than two thousand members and they come from different personal values system and they take their individual skill and experiences to the organisation. When individual identities and the demands of the STA are different, moral and ethical dilemmas and conflict with the structure may arise. Although there is no formal code of ethics for STA members, a number of ethical principles are implied by the moral of Myanmar society. In each case, to make a moral judgement about what is "right" depends on certain situations. A number of moral and ethical dilemmas can arise around issues related to information and communication. When individuals with different moral values meet dilemmas and conflicts with the structure they should find ways around the official structure, but without directly confronting or conflicting with the organisation. They should use a bending and side-stepping approach as it involves activities that are not officially sanctioned and may involve actions of questionable legality and the range of strategic approaches to STA. Besides, for some situations creating alternative structures is needed. Collectives, co- operatives and community- managed organisations should be aware of these alternatives, and their potential for their organisation aims.
The basis of the program's community support and participation
STA has only been in place for one year so it has less experience then many others. However it has been recognised by Myanmar communities as a dignified non profit organisation. When STA invites the community to donate, the community is involved and participation increases more than before.
Empathy and understanding of cultural awareness practice
STA home- care programs show the cultural awareness practice of the members. In Myanmar culture, respect to elderly parents and care for them is the responsibility of their new generation. If elderly parents live in aged- care canter, it is shameful for their new generations. Thus some elderly parents live with their new generation although they feel lonely and without care from family. STA home – care programs visit elderly persons with warm relations, treat them with empathy and love them as their own parents. This program is successful and elderly persons and their family are more accepted.
In conclusion, STA achieves their stated goal and community participation for Myanmar elderly people. They use the contribution to peace to Myanmar's elderly people and let all Myanmar people treat Myanmar seniors with love, sharing and empathy.
Attachment:
Photos from STA warm activities for seniors,
Home –care programs and
Donation to other community needs
Referencing and Bibliography
Book
1. Community Development – Community based alternatives in anage of globalisation; IFE.J & TESORIERO.F 3rd Edition; Pearson Education Australia; 2006.
2. Working in Human Service Organisation; Jones. A, May.J ; Longman ;1999.
Website
http://www.facebook.com/l/KAQCmD3s5AQCF8UZvCfyzsxCCELNnl7VdGkiLZNRIxwpHNg/savetheaged.ning.com/http://www.facebook.com/l/mAQCVh6xGAQCCAd4anh0FfyA_oDw8mtbdL0V_Nmu6pX8OBw/www.ngoinmyanmar.org/http://www.facebook.com/l/NAQB9kBFDAQC6e9hKLRqD4BIdnzes63cvK7J_htmfebaWTw/www.agedcareaustralia.gov.au/internet/agedcare/publishing.nsf/content/types+of+care+and+servicesAttachment
STA warm activities for seniors
Home –care programs
Donation to other community needs
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ျဖီးထားျဖန္းထားတာေလးကို သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြအားလံုးဖတ္ရေအာင္ မွ်လိုက္ပါတယ္ဗ်ာ..ေ၀ဖန္ အၾကံေပးၾကပါအံုး.. ေ၀ဖန္ေရးနဲ႕ ေလကန္ေရးကို အလိုရွိပါသည္
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