Mutual support groups offer great potential

If pensions prove highly effective to reduce poverty and to empower they still fail to fully protect older people against bigger crises as for example a more serious illness.

The formation - or better the facilitation - of mutual support groups - has the objective to create an additional safety net for older people and their dependents.

The groups are self organized and give themselves their own rules and objectives: Mutual support for sick members, small income generating activities, and various forms of group savings are among the most frequent acitivities. And of course socializing.

The existence of these groups has proved to be highly helpful for Kwa Wazee to promote health prevention through peer-to-peer health assistants, to build up a better security system in the neighbourhood and to advocate the rights of older people towards local authorities.

The formation of mutual support groups is based on group structures well known in the area like the funeral groups which support the members when there is a death in the household. However for the first time these groups are exclusively formed for older people.

The mutual support groups are very popular. At the end of 2019 over one thousand older people were members of one of over eighty groups. Many members are not pensioners, as they could not be included in the limited pension programme but were nonetheless welcomed in the groups.