Retirees Volunteering to Assist Third World Countries

Pierre le Boulanger, 60, a retired farmer from Brittany, had never left France before he went to Cameroon to help an investor set up a poultry farm. Annick Marie, 58, a former secretary, stayed a year in Togo teaching a young secretary in a Christian diocese.

They could have stayed home watching TV or playing with their grandchildren. Instead, like about 2,000 other retirees in France, they volunteered to share time and knowledge with Third World countries through a private nonprofit association of retired people dedicated to promoting development and cooperation between the West and developing nations.

The oldest volunteer in the group known as AGIR is 88, the youngest 43. The group says retired craftsmen, bankers, technicians, nurses, teachers, engineers, farmers and company managers have put in a total of 30,000 workdays in the Third World since the group was created in 1983.

Volunteers are performing such tasks as conducting a study on the reorganization of the National Development Bank of Mali, taking care of disabled and abandoned children in Haiti and assisting a Tuareg tribe of nomads begin a settled agricultural life.

“We are retired people who want to live more wisely than just playing Petanque or dealing out cards,” says the group’s president, Jean Petithory, 55. “What we are doing may just be a drop in the ocean--sometimes you have to use a magnifying glass to notice it--but several drops dispersed all over the world, combined with the action of other non-governmental organizations, can make a difference.”

But the study of the National Development Bank of Mali was not a drop in the ocean, development experts say. The volunteers were contacted by the World Bank, which otherwise would have hired expensive specialists. The team has spent more than two years rethinking an institution responsible for 80% of the government loans to Malian companies.

“Since the National Development Bank closed, the Malian economy was stalling,” said Robert le Duhan, 67, a former financial public administrator.

Fifty volunteers went to Mali, among them six financial specialists who worked through the end of last year. Another project sent 15 professors to Cambodia to work on rebuilding an education system for 10 villages.

The group is funded by subscriptions, private sponsors and public grants. It usually asks clients to pay for travel and accommodations for volunteers. When the project involves major funding, however, they work with other non-governmental organizations, such as the Friends of Mother Theresa.

In his professional capacity, Le Duhan administered varied organizations that used public funding. He has used that experience in five trips to Africa to reorganize clinics, dioceses or manufacturers, often living in the poorest areas.

He remembered with emotion the warm welcome he received: “It is always the poor people that give the most. Villagers were amazed and admiring of this old lady or this old man who came to see, talk and work with them instead of staying home and playing bridge.”

He said he is spiritually richer and has new vision: “Now I have a more realistic view of developing problems. But above all, I have discovered populations accepting their fate with a dignity and a happiness unknown in France.”