Nutmeg Community were recently lucky enough to be involved with an inter-generational IT project on Grahame Park. Our volunteers had such a positive experience that they wanted to tell others about it in the hope that others will be inspired to take part in, or set up similar projects in their own communities. Azeem, Fadil and Ahmad, came to Nutmeg from The Challenge, HeadStart, a scheme where participants complete a volunteer placement to gain employability skills and a guaranteed job interview. Here is their story in their own words:
Over the past 2 weeks Nutmeg community has been working with the Grahame park consortium which is a group of organisations, working together on joint bids to provide services locally to the community. We worked closely with Jan, who is a member of the consortium and works for the Colindale community trust with an organisation called Living Way ministries whose aim is to help rejuvenate the area and provide opportunities for families to increase their income, for more educational attainment within the younger generation and reduce social isolation of the older generation. The project originally started last May, where younger people took the elderly to the RAF museum. This idea gave the health and well-being subgroup of the consortium the ability to run more intergenerational projects like this. This particular project is funded by the Genesis Housing association who have a commitment to the socioeconomic rejuvenation of the area as well as physical rejuvenation.
The aim of the project is to catalyse socioeconomic regeneration in the area by providing a safe environment for older and younger generations to integrate through the use of technology. The younger generation have been working towards making the older generation more technologically aware in order to improve health and well being. For example: using NHS services online, and to be digitally connected with friends and family.
During the project we worked with John, a Volunteer Co-Ordinator at Community Barnet, who did the outreach for this project by advertising at local libraries and independent living seminars. He also guided us through what we needed to do to assist the eledery residents.
Over the past 2 weeks, while working with the older generation, we taught them new skills, such as how to set up an email and text relatives. This might seem like an easy task for most, but was something that they struggled with in today’s technologically advanced society. We also found that they were able to teach us a few things as well, through volunteering we gained a variety of new skills such as being better at communicating with them and adapting our skills to be able to teach different people with different approaches.
One person that we taught was Rohit, who had been cut off from contacting his family because he wasn’t able to use WhatsApp, and after we taught him how to use it, he was able to message his family in Tanzania and was overjoyed. This was an insightful and refreshing experience for all of us, as we saw how something so simple for the younger generation, might be vital for the older generation. Technologies that we take for granted such as social networking can allow them to speak to people they haven’t spoken to in years. This gave Rohit a new desire in life and rejuvenated him completely.
The program has been successful not only for us as we learnt many new skills, but also for the local community in the sense that the generations have been integrated to some extent and the project has met its aims that it first set out with. We hope that the program will be able to carry on and will grow on a larger scale.
Written by Nutmeg Volunteers: Azeem, Fadil and Ahmad