Empowering Elders

Months of Feb and March this year,  seem to me to be the ones of receiving blessings from elders !

Deeply moved by the sad faces of many seniors projecting their helpless travails of losing valuables over cyber space, I set out in Feb this year, to address the basic issue of operating computers and held five long sessions discussing and hand holding them with some basics. I was moved by the feedback from over 50 senior citizen participants in those sessions,  about how none cared to teach them these basics even though the ones whom they taught right from cursive writing to JEE coaching were well equipped to do this but were too busy with their own family, preparing the next generation to disappoint them in this area !! (For more details on this, read at the post: https://kapalicanvas.blogspot.com/2022/02/back-to-school-with-grand-parents.html  ) 

When they prodded me to continue with the sessions, I was only too willing to organize few classes on 'Handling email' teaching them right from creating an email account to locate the downloaded attachments, alerting about some pitfalls that they could encounter in the form of phishing and other methods used with email.

Almost the same set of elders were too happy to join and enjoyed the sessions as was evident from the fact that a majority of the 40 elders attended eagerly both the sessions and that included super seniors above the age of 75 years. I felt honoured that a friend who helped me in stepping into the computer arena, when I struggled to make the high fee back in 1982, too participated. The attendees included very senior , but now retired, professionals and the most rewarding moments were realized on getting their feedback, some of which are given below:

As was evident from the feedback, elders not only suffer from lack of updated knowledge but also has to fight other challenges like memory loss, retention etc., It's time the younger ones spend atleast some time, if not more time, with their elders and avoid their feeling lonely and being left alone in the cyber space. I wish I could contribute more to this cause.