The Guwosari village elderly assistance program in Bantul district has yielded results. It has been running for almost a year and has developed an independent cadre for the elderly Posyandu Orchid.

Without any reminders nor did closely monitoring from SurveyMETER, they carried out the two main program activities very well. First, posyandu services, routine elderly exercises, and supplementary feeding (PMT) were carried out regularly every 2 weeks at 2 points. Second, visits to the bedridden elderly who were sick and just lying helpless at home were conducted regularly once a month, especially after the cadres received training on the formation of a hypertension club, post-stroke training and home care, and joint movement exercises.

quoted from the program coordinator, Titis Putri Ambarwati, having received the pieces of training, the capacity of the Orchid Posyandu cadres has grown fast. They are increasingly confident and independent in carrying out their activities. They also afford to do things from weighing, taking blood pressure measurements, performing gymnastics instruction, to inputting data into laptops. The laptop was a grant from SurveyMETER delivered during the training held on February 2, 2016.

The laptop’s aid is very supportive to monitoring the progress, maintaining performance effectiveness, and obtaining the independence of cadres. They were utilized to document elderly health data when conducting posyandu services. The recapitulation of the elderly health development data was respectively applied by cadres as a reference to provide advice or further examination services, then the elderly health data including the categorized hypertension or not was also referred to determine whether they could participate in the elderly exercise or not. (JF)