Community’s Learning Process for Developing the Elderly’s Quality of Life on Occupation in Nong Khwang Community, Phon Samran Subdistrict, Khu Muang District, Buriram Province

Abstract

               The objectives of this research were to study: 1) situations and problems of quality of life of the elderly, 2) community learning process, and 3) establishment of learning process for improving the quality of life in occupation of the elderly. The research tools were forums, group discussions and interviews. Community participation process was applied to the samples which consisted of community leaders, the elderly and officers of Phon Samran Sub district Administrative Organization and sub district health promoting hospital via the participatory action research. The results were as follows:  1) In terms of situations and problems affecting the quality of life of the elderly, has an elderly population of 13.98 percent of the population, it was found that the elderly held a lot of debt (76%). Health problems and lifestyles have changed, causing old wisdom to disappear. There were some elderly who felt depressed about their well-being. However, they desired to have career-related activities and restoration of local wisdom to improve their quality of life. 2) There were three levels of original learning process in the community : individual level such as personal attention and individual learning from specialists, family level through absorbing and following the activities of family’s members from generation to generation, community level through the process of community refinement and practices and network level learning. 3) in terms of the establishment of learning process for improving the quality of life in career, it revealed that the process started with listening to the persons who directed their thought for self-analysis, studying other communities with similar social contexts then imitating, and using religious activities such as festivals for knowledge exchange. For example, on the Buddhist Lent and Buddhist Holy days, the elderly gathered together at temples and learned to make basketry.  In addition, there was an elevation in individualized knowledge to be a community learning base such as 1 Rai integrated farming, elderly’s backyard farming, basket making, etc.