The everyday use of new media is nowadays taken for granted by all young people but for older adults, however, it is not so common. The project aims to provide older adults with knowledge of using new technology, especially internet so they can establish on line participation on issues that affect them (e.g. e-democracy). In this way they will increase social contact and reduce feelings of isolation so they feel more integrated into the society.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Karlovac
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
Older adults are often underrepresented on line because they feel that they are too old to learn new things, and the Internet represents something new and complicated. Many of barriers have to be overcome if they want to participate in this way (e.g. motivation, feelings of inadequacy). We find this possible and research results show us that more and more older adults are open to innovations, and they would like to acquire this kind of knowledge.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
With gained education and knowledge participants will create their own on line line community which is going to be a platform for all interested people. They will create several blogs which will include e-democracy because of the interests of older people in political life; “real life” blogs which will describe everyday life of older citizens and the problems they are dealing with combining their past life with their present life.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
We have already worked with older adults in the field of providing them with basic computes skills and we had excellent feed backs. Also, we had initial meting with organization called “Action of retired people-Together” which welcomed our idea. We have, also, cooperation with many NGO’s in Karlovac that are working with older adults and they are interested to refer them to us.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
We will train and mentor 50 participants during the project duration. We are going to work in groups of ten participants in order to ensure the best quality of transfered knowledge. We will seek them through our established cooperation with other NGO’s, local media and website.Their assurance to stay in the project will be accomplished by interesting new methods of learning, constantly mentoring and giving them sense of ownership over the project
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
Contact with organizations that are implementing similar projects for exchanging good practice and maybe developing new common project.
Contact name
Manuela Kasunic
Organization
KA-MATRIX – Association for Social development