Older people’s stories

HelpAge is responding to severe climate change patterns in La Guajira, Colombia, by providing elaborate water systems.

On World Mental Health Day (10 October), we want to shine a spotlight on the mental health support needed by older refugees such as Abbas.

Tatiana meets daily with other Ukrainian refugees in Moldova to practice Nordic walking together.

Somalia has faced a severe drought, the worst in 40 years, forcing many older people to flee their home villages.

Mykola (64) and his wife Nataliia (65) fled the war in Ukraine and are now helping spread kindness within their displaced community.

Robina Bughio, 56, is a widow living in the village of Hadi Bux Shah in the suburbs of Shahpur Jahania, in Shaheed Benazirabad District, Sindh Province.

Muhmmad Salih (75) from Shahpur Jahania village in Shaheed Benazirabad district, is now living with his family in the open air as they couldn’t get to the shelter provided in the community school quickly enough, and it was already full. The mud-plastered home he shared with his wife and four children was completely destroyed by the heavy rains and his livestock were killed. 

Haji Noor Muhammad (70) from Shaheed Benazirabad district in Sindh Province is paralysed down the right side of his body so when heavy rains destroyed his home, he struggled to make it to a safer place.

I was born on July 12, 1941, as bombs were falling. My father named me ‘Viktoria’ for victory, anticipating a win over the Nazi invaders.

I am from Lyadova in Vinnytsia Oblast, near the Moldovan border, but I moved to a suburb of Kyiv with my daughter, Olga (46), and granddaughter Anastasiia (15), four years ago.

I was born in 1935 in Poltava, and when I was seven, we moved to Russia. For three years, we had nothing to eat, but my mother worked at an orphanage, and she gave us water mixed with flour, and that is how we survived. It was very, very hard.

My name is Alloise Fana Ngcobo, I am 72 and live in Clermont Township, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.