RIGHT from nurturing babies in the womb, parents worldwide spend most of their time caring for their children. Parents are responsible for their children’s nutritional, educational and social-emotional growth and development. In raising children, parents shape who that individual will be and what they will accomplish. Parenting is an important job that often requires additional support from family members, caregivers, healthcare professionals and educators.
Global Day of Parents is celebrated on June 1st to appreciate the selfless commitment that parents have toward their children and the sacrifice they make throughout their lives to nurture that parent-child relationship. The happiness that a parent experiences from the first time they see their newborn is an emotion that never fades throughout their lifetime.
Empty nest syndrome
But after a lifetime of caring for their children, many parents experience the heartbreak of empty nest syndrome after their children leave home to start their own lives. The loneliness that parents feel is common and there are many things a person can do to continue nurturing the relationship such as frequent visits, regular phone calls, spending festivals together and being responsible to care for parents when they become too old to take care of themselves.
While most parents experience empty nest syndrome, the sad reality is that many children entirely abandon their parents in their old age. Being denied food and medicine and even thrown out of their homes, these parents have no one to support them and are forced to face the dangers of the streets. Their health deteriorates, they are vulnerable to exploitation and their will to live is shattered by the realization that they have been abandoned by the children whom they have loved for their entire lives.
What you can do on Global Day of Parents
This Global Day of Parents, you can help the elderly left in miserable conditions by family members who no longer want to care for them through various means, including supporting NGOs that bring the abandoned elderly from the streets care for them. Here are two NGOs with a mission to care for abandoned parents:
Susmita De of Abhoy Mission shares in this touching video that old people are often left on the steps of hospitals by their children who walk away, leaving them all alone. These old parents suffer from dementia, arthritis and other debilitating diseases. Most of the elderly people living at the Abhoy Mission Ashram are elderly women who struggle to deal with their abandonment and their many health problems. Abhoy Mission gives them a loving home with regular nutritious meals, medical care, physiotherapy, rehabilitation and counselling.
But what is most special about this NGO is that the elderly have the opportunity to live alongside the special-needs children who are also taken care of by the NGO. In this unique home, abandoned parents and children find a family in each other. But the Abhoy Mission Ashram is crumbling due to excessive wear and tear over the decades and is in need of extensive repair. The NGO needs your help to reconstruct their home. Your charitable donation to their fundraiser on Give can help Abhoy Mission build a new home for these 93 senior citizens and children.
Founded in 1984, Share and Care provides for elderly men and women who have been abused and abandoned by their own children and have nowhere to go. The NGO’s founder Carmel describes in this emotional video the heartbreak experienced by old people mistreated by their children. These 400 senior citizens in Chennai and Thiruvallur districts live below the poverty line and suffer from the loss of hearing and vision, diabetes, leprosy, tuberculosis and other health complications.
For each person, Share and Care provides dry food rations with rice, lentils, flour, nuts and spices so they can eat nutritious food every day. In addition to giving them clothes and blankets, the NGO organizes medical camps so each person gets the medicines and follow-up treatment they need. The NGO also offers geriatric counselling, physiotherapy, yoga and social gatherings so these elderly and abandoned parents can find comfort in one another. But Share and Care needs your support to continue caring for these neglected parents. You can help the organization by donating to their fundraiser on Give.
Bhavada Devi Memorial Philanthropic Trust (SENEH)
He served in the Indian air force for over 30 years. But when Group Captain AC Barua retired from service and was providing emergency aid to people in Assam after the 2007 floods, it was clear that there was no retirement from his service to the people of the country. He witnessed devastation in the area but one of the most heartbreaking scenes was abandoned elderly women left to fend for themselves on the streets. He founded the Bhavada Devi Memorial Trust and began looking after destitute women in the home called SENEH.
“The 28 destitute women who stay here have got nobody in the world”, shares Group Captain AC Barua in this video. SENEH rescues these helpless women from the streets and gives them a safe home with nutritious food, counselling, medical and psychiatric care, clothing, hobbies and emotional support. SENEH is financed personally by Group Captain AC Barua and he needs your support to continue helping these women. Without SENEH, they would not only be homeless, but would not survive, he explains. Support his fundraiser on Give and help care for destitute women.
This Global Day of Parents, each one of us can help parents across the country who have been abandoned by their children and left with no shelter, food, medicine or care. Your donation to these NGOs enables them to continue providing basic needs to these neglected parents and helping them live in happiness and dignity.
Shirley has been in the development sector for over 10 years and is passionate about making a change in the world around her, including adopting dogs and writing to make a difference.
