IBM volunteer program focuses on elderly care in China

A four-week volunteer service program carried out in Beijing by the international tech giant IBM has focused attention on China’s elderly care issue and how technology can help.

The program aims to “improve the quality of life of the elderly in China” with an emphasis on dementia and Alzheimer’s patients.

Elderly care in China is expected to be a very challenging social issue in the coming years. And the United Nations defines an aging society as a country with more than 10 percent of its population over the age of 60.

“By this definition China is already an aging society,” says Perumaneth Krishnan Nair, one of the IBM volunteers, who is from India.

Speaking about the problem, he says that as there is an alarming growth of Alzheimer ’s cases in China, elderly care cost will quite possibly become the number one expense category for Chinese families in the future.

The IBM program, called Corporate Service Corps, was first established by the company in 2008. And under the program, it annually chooses staff members from various locations worldwide to participate in cross-national, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary community service projects.

To date, more than 400 teams, which involved more than 4000 IBM employees, have participated in more than 1,300 public consulting projects in more than 40 countries around the globe.

The CSC team that served in Beijing comprised 15 volunteers from nine countries. And the members have worked for more than 10 years at IBM on average, and are from broad range of professional areas, such as information management, consulting, training, asset management, project management and financial analysis.

Separately, the IBM CSC worked with five Beijing-based organizations in cognitive impairment, to promote cooperation between the institutions and enhance their capabilities.

The partner organizations included the Peking University Sixth Hospital’s Research Center for Memory Impairment and the Diagnosis; the Third Hospital Affiliated to the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine; the China Population Welfare Foundation; the Shengzefeng Elderly Apartment and the CAJ Elderly Care Service Center.