Introduction
“Kitchen Garden to enrich elderly homes in Delhi” is a project of Community Health Department, Stephen’s Hospital. It was started in 2016, based on two years of excellent experience with “Adopt-A-Tree Project” under urban horticulture. The project is supported by Humana People to People Foundation India.
Aims
- To develop individual and collective ability of elderly community for environment preservation.
- To develop the knowledge, skills and capacity of interested elderly and community Clean and Green Activists (CCGA) regarding horticulture and kitchen garden.
Objectives
- To hold meetings with resident elders of 10 old-age homes and to tell them the benefits of having ‘Kitchen Garden’ and to involve them in it.
- To do need assessment of the homes regarding the type of flowers, plants to be grown.
- Free health checkup of the elderly to develop good rapport and to detect the diseases common in the elderly.
- Competition among the homes to give prizes to kitchen garden which have been maintained well.
- To involve the Community Clean and Green activists(CCGA) to support the project and to pay honorarium to them.
- To give refresher training regarding kitchen garden to elderly, CCGA, child and youth volunteers, community women and staff of community health department.
Activities being carried out
- Meeting with Old-home residents.
- Planting of different vegetables, plants.
- Providing different tools, pesticides and manure etc. to the homes.
- Health checkup of residents.
- Filling questionnaires to assess mental health of elderly.
- Distribution of booklets and pamphlets regarding plants.
- Showing them poster and charts to give training.
- Refreshment distribution to elderly residents and staff of the homes.
