Krishna Murari Gautam’s father was diagnosed with dementia in 2006. The experience was not as supportive as it should have been: there were no dementia specialists nor geriatricians he could access, and his family and relatives did not know enough about dementia to adequately support him and his father. Driven by the experience, Krishna Murari Gautam embarked on a journey to start a movement to better support older people and their carers in Nepal and around the world, and in 2011 he established Ageing Nepal as a civil society organization.
Through Ageing Nepal, Krishna Murari Gautam works to conduct training, research, campaigns, and advocacy in all cross-cutting issues that affect older people. For example, Ageing Nepal is one of the only organizations in the country that provides training on geriatric care to caregivers and nurses, and regularly provides funding to students to conduct thesis-level research on ageing-related topics.
But one of Krishna Murari Gautam’s most inspiring projects is his work through Ageing Nepal to empower older women by providing basic and digital literacy classes. In Nepal, most older women are illiterate due to traditional social taboos on girls’ education, early marriage, and limited educational opportunities available before the 1960s. Literacy has a profound impact on older people’s ability to participate in society, learn, grow, and contribute, and a pilot project run by Ageing Nepal to teach illiterate older people has now been scaled up to cover 7 areas of Kathmandu Valley with government support.
These literacy classes changed the lives of hundreds of older women in Nepal, empowering them to live independent lives free from abuse and gain access to new social networks. Perhaps most importantly, these older women are now aware of their rights and the services they are entitled to. Krishna Murari Gautam’s work shines a light on the importance of education for healthy ageing, and the innovative possibilities offered by work that supports older people in ways taken for granted in more resourced parts of the world.