HANOI (Viet Nam News), October 5, 2008
By Du Van Nga
What will happen to me when I’m old is not something I usually think about.
However, I hope that I will be as strong as Nguyen Thi Ngoc Trai, a 76-year-old woman and manager of Recas, a centre devoted to providing assistance and companionship to elderly people without families to care for them.
My first impression of Trai is a sympathetic one; through the telephone, I can sense the warmth in her voice and, by her accent, I can tell she is from the ancient city of Hue.
Band of geriatrics: Ngoc Trai (first left) together with some volunteers visit and present gifts for an old woman who has been helped by Recas. Photo courtesy of Nguyen Thi Ngoc Trai
"At over 70 years old, the elderly ought to be relaxed and taken care of by their families, but unfortunately the more our society develops, the higher the number of elderly that are left alone. It is a heartbreaking truth of modern life," Trai said.
This is why, through Recas, Trai has devoted the last 17 years of her life to helping support hundreds of elderly people struggling with the difficulties of ageing.
In 1991, Ngoc Trai was a deputy editor-in-chief at Van Nghe newspaper. Although she was still strong enough to keep working, she decided to retire and devote the rest of her life to founding and running Recas.
Children are considered the future of the world, she confided, but we cannot ignore the elderly, who have devoted most of their lives to raising others.
Ngoc Trai looks much younger than she is. She has the face of a kind-hearted, gracious person, but is surrounded by an aura of power.
Trai has always believed that it is important to co-operate with other international organisations to reach a common objective, but she is adamant about the fact that she has never taken money with strings attached; she was never willing to compromise her lifelong goal.
"I have travelled to many countries in the world including France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Japan using my own money, to learn about and research models and projects relating to caring for the elderly," Trai said.
She added that the main goal of Recas was to take care of the elderly who don’t have a family to care for them, many of whom could not afford to live on their own.
"However, our centre is a drop of water in the ocean, meaning that there are a large number of the elderly who need care and Recas is too small to address everything I have seen that makes me uneasy about the poor circumstances the elderly are in," Trai explained.
"Thinking that, I decided to expand our operations," she said.
Trai said that Recas has educated over 800 staff members, who now work all over the country, including Hai Duong, Hue, Da Nang, Nam Dinh, Ha Noi and HCM City.
So far, she had built a successful system of professional staff and volunteers to care for the elderly in their own homes. "That is the best way for me to take care of a maximum number of the elderly," she said.
While the staff is able to take care of their physical needs, Trai points out that people need more than food to live happily.
"I myself am an old woman so I can understand that the elderly often have a special need to confide in someone and that each of them is an individual; sometimes their difficulties are not money or economic hardships. Sometimes they are the difficulties of daily life or emotions they need to share," Trai said.
Meeting her before a small birthday party for an old woman in the centre, I had a chance to witness faces radiant with smiles.
Remembering the early days of the Recas Centre, she said, "I had to open a small restaurant specialising in Thua Thien-Hue food at my own house, at No 6, Ly Thuong Kiet street, to help pay costs to operate and maintain Recas."
"First, I had been cooking for a long time to save money, but step by step I transferred the running of the restaurant to my family, partly to save time for me, and partly to create jobs for my relatives."
With all that Ngoc Trai has accomplished, it is no surprise that her devotion is being internationally recognised.
Earlier this year, she was the only Asia representative at a seminar on the elderly, under the Commission on Sustainable Development of the United Nations, where she gave a speech.
Though she is busy running Recas, Trai already has plans to build a centre for relaxation and ecological tourism. She hopes it will be a common ground where the elderly can come to socialise, she said, but wants to remind children that the centre is no substitute for the love and support of a family.
Trai’s own children have followed in her footsteps: one son is earning his PhD in Germany and the other is deputy director of the National Humanitarian Research Institute and manager of the May School.
"Now I have only one hope: to stay healthy and continue to live so I can devote myself to helping society. All I have done so far is not to make money, but with a hope that my children will inherit righteousness instead of richness," Trai said.
Copyright by Viet Nam News
