Digital Inclusion for Older people: The HelpAge India Experiment!
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Ishanti Ghose from HelpAge India, working on creating the Smartphone
Booklet for Elders
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When Ishanti
Ghose, a young working woman, sipped her espresso, at work, on a Monday morning
while narrating to her colleagues, her weekend escapade with her grandmother
learning technology, little had she known, that, just a friendly conversation
with her coworkers will gradually take the shape of an incredible new project for
social change sprouting from within the
organization itself!
Ishanti
works at HelpAge India.
As Ishanti shared her
grandmother’s innocence and excitement at learning Whatsapp and Skype, she also
realized how this simple knowledge had the power to connect a senior at home to
her old schoolmates across the world and also to her grandchildren with just a
mouse click! She saw how giving older people access to technology improved the
quality of their lives significantly by encouraging interaction and therefore,
combating their loneliness.
Within precisely a few minutes, Ishanti had
a candid chat with Manjira Khurana, Country Head, Advocacy and Communications
at HelpAge India and within a couple of hours the project idea was firmly
conceptualized. Manjira says, ‘It was an
idea based on fulfilling a need, elderly had, and was backed by empathy towards
the cause, conceptualized by a young person. We brainstormed how this could be
a potential game-changer for providing digital access to at least the thousands
of elderly actively associated with HelpAge through the pan India network of
Senior Citizen Associations. Within a week, a basic tech learning primer was
developed – “Making smartphone and
computer learning, fun and easy.” Ishanti designed the booklet in a couple
of days and before the end of the week, we got the booklets printed at almost
zero cost and also made it available online on HelpAge
India
official website and Advantage website for anyone to download it for
free. True information access happens when it is not offered at a premium. We
wanted as many seniors as possible to start using the primer and get on the way
to becoming tech-savvy.”
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Young volunteers across the country are using the HelpAge India Smartphone
Booklet to teach seniors.
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HelpAge
reached to 100 plus volunteers and young interns to take 2 day training
sessions across 15 cities in India. The digital inclusion initiative started in
November 2015 proved to be a success, with over 350 training sessions being
conducted within two months.
Young volunteers across the country
trained the elderly at the senior citizen associations on the basics of Google
Maps, Whatsapp, paying utility bills online, booking a cab if stranded etc. One outstanding impact we saw post the
creation of the smartphone and computer training primer was that several small
local computer coaching institutes reached out to HelpAge India seeking
permission to use the Primer to give free classes to seniors.. Several hundred Young
techies from software companies have started using the Primer to teach seniors
in their office neighborhoods as a part of their CSR efforts.
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HelpAge volunteers teaching navigation on Google Maps to elders at a
Senior Citizen Association, New Delhi
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Says
Raman, a young volunteer from an engineering college in Delhi, “The Primer with it’s easy step-by-step
processes and with icons shown against each step gives confidence to the elders
to revisit their lessons post the training sessions.”
In an effort to
fight loneliness, young HelpAge volunteers have picked up a crusade to teach
the elderly, Smartphones, Skype, Google maps, Internet and more! These little
things have gone a long way to make the seniors feel technologically and
socially updated and included.
It is so very gratifying for
volunteers when their elder “students” thank them, as was the case of Mrs.
Neeta Chatterjee, 82 years from Chittranjan Park, New Delhi.
“When I asked my daughter to teach me how
to use my new smartphone, I could not understand her rapid fire instructions.
But when the HelpAge volunteer came with the technology primer, she explained
it slowly going over each step and I suddenly started enjoying the process of
learning new technology. Facebook, Google and Skype were no longer frightening
strangers, but, became my friends. Today, I talk to my grandson in San
Francisco, pay my Airtel mobile bill online, and can you imagine, I even bought
a microwave oven on Amazon.com!” says, Neeta. She goes on to
add, “My mornings are no longer lonely.
After breakfast, I log on to my Facebook
account and chat with six of my college mates - Batch of ‘62.”
With
this experiment, HelpAge India is more committed than ever to include digital
inclusion as one of the empowering pillars of Active Ageing being propagated.
