Two warm meals a day

A project of the heart and of compassion: Since its inception IPA has been supporting the nursing home in Gjirokastër – frequently fighting adverse circumstances and difficult financial situations.

Old people who are lucky in Albania are cared for by their relatives at home. The unlucky ones end up in one of the nursing homes, lonely and neglected. In the whole of Albania, with its 3.2 m inhabitants, there are only 5 old people’s homes. By contrast, the city of Zurich, with a population of 380’000, boasts 25 such homes, not counting private nursing homes.

The nursing home of Gjirokastër – with its 45,000 inhabitants being one of the main cities of Southern Albania – caters for the aged and physically or mentally handi-capped. The co-existence of such different patients is not always easy; conflicts are a recurrent problem.

The number of residents varies greatly. Often the home is operating at capacity or very often even above. The main issue is that the budget is not sufficient. In 2008 the monthly budget for the entire home was about CHF 17,000. This had to cover the salaries of 21 employees and all other expenses - meals, electricity, water etc.
IPA has been lending its support to this home for many years. At the beginning the aim was to ensure that the residents would get two warm meals a day.

The washing machine broke down time and again, so IPA replaced it with a new one. Residents very often do not know what to do with their time. There are no social activities or planned out-ings. So, a stu-dio for needle work was set up as a way of occupying them.

IPA buys food from repayments of
micro credits for old and handicapped people.

A project for an old people’s home is not easy to finance. The majority of donors don’t want to invest in old people, as this is not seen as anything “sustainable”. Moreover, this is a project without completion. IPA has solved this problem as follows: The organisation extends micro credits in Albania, which as such have no direct connection with the nursing home. With the repayments of these credits, however, IPA purchases food for the home.

For two years some Zurich based nursing homes, such as the innovative “Sydefädeli”, have supported the home in Albania. In Gjirokastër the origins of IPA lie: in 1994 the “Solidaritätsgruppe Partner für Gjirokastër“ (solidarity group partner for Gjirokastër) was founded, from which IPA emerged in 2001.