This Friday I was running a little late to the class. As I entered to the class both my tutors Brian and Sue just pounced upon me saying “today we are going to love!” I was a bit startled first. What did they mean? So, later Brian explained the brief which is:
Epsom & Ewell Council have commissioned a project to look at their social services provision across the borough
The project is about looking at where spending can be saved regarding services to the youth and elderly community
Areas for address are:
- Community Service
- Youth service
- Senior citizens
- Care in the community
Analysis in my notebook. Please excuse my bad hand-writing.
As fun as it sounds, this is a very serious project. We were divided into groups. My idea was to bridge a gap between the youth and the elders of the community using technology. So, I started analysing what the Youth and Elders need. After a long conversation with the group we all reached to the consensus that Youth (without families) are lonely, and need guidance. The have to make big decisions about their lives on their own and often this is tough for them. The tend to find answers on the internet.
On the other hand, Elderly people (who are not in touch with their young ones) are also lonely, but they have their life’s experiences, which means that they have the wisdom to guide. They can give valuable advice to the youth but they are also late adopters of new technology.
Our plan is to make a platform called “U R Useful”. It would have a face-to-face video calling interface (like Skype or Hangout). Maybe we can get Microsoft or Google involved in this project. My idea was to encourage both Youth and elderly to use this platform at least once a day for 15 minutes and get in touch with each other. This way, both can help each other. Both have something that the other person needs. Getting the youth to adopt to technology isn’t much of a challenge, but for elderly, the group agreed on a single function, extremely easy to use device. It would be so easy that it has just one button on it, pressing which would just connect the Elderly person to their youth contact.
Another challenge is to get both the parties to start using this platform. For this another brilliant idea from the group came. We can get both of them together in a room during a community event like a festival. Maybe they can celebrate Christmas together.
I think that more ideas like this are needed all over the world in different communities to bring happiness. Governments only focus on raising the monetary value of their economies while the quality of life deteriorates.
How do you think you can bring the communities together?
