Safety Homes for the Elderly
The importance of elderly members of the community as custodians of indigenous food systems and traditional knowledge holders cannot be stressed more at NESFAS. As such, understanding the need for precautionary measures to protect the more vulnerable elderly members during the wake of the first wave of the pandemic, NESFAS undertook a pilot project of building retrofit rooms for these elderly members. The initiative was first started in Nongtraw Community before rolling out to some other partner communities.
Contributions from NESFAS staff and friends amounted to half (50%) of the expenses that were incurred in building these retrofit rooms while the concerned communities bore the remaining half (50% of cost). The project was a demonstration of a need-based solution activated during the pandemic at an efficient cost and time to safeguard the community’s assets, in this case, the custodians of the traditional knowledge. A total of 70 elderly households were built for 79 elders across 8 villages/communities under this project.