Canadian HR Reporter Weekly

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 November 21, 2018 life because they can show them how to communicate in a more effective way with their family." e workers see the volunteer time with seniors as a "stepping stone" and gain valuable experience, said Joaniss, while some who are immigrants use the opportunity to improve their English-language skills. "Volunteers have said that it has given them a chance to help seniors in a way they never thought possible before. Many have had less-than-enjoyable interactions trying to help immediate family learn technology, but the dynamics are different with a stranger and everyone seems to find that key in making this an experience they want to repeat or do more often," she said. "We've also had volunteers apply to us specifically saying in their application that they would like to gain experience with users who have visual impairments, to make them better able to understand the different types of clients they are developing software for." e reaction from seniors so far has been "overwhelming," according to Joaniss. "Everywhere we go, it just seems to be we wish there was more, and they can't wait for us to come back in and our volunteers that we've managed to get to work along with us, the seniors that we're working with, love them," she said. "ey feel empowered, they feel like they're being given access to a world that they otherwise would not have had access to at all." Learning opportunity Feedback from seniors is solicited after the sessions, and the organizers use this to design new curricula, said Damen. "We have an evaluation framework (and) based on that, they can request various workshops because, obviously this depends quite heavily on mental agility and the interest," she said. "It is still very much a learning process from that standpoint but the thing that has been working really well for us is we have quite a loyal base of seniors who come and visit our workshops and so that gives us a very good way of choosing communication to continue to improve and enhance it from that standpoint." While women are not actively being targeted, Connected Canadians is finding there is a much higher proportion of female seniors in the classes. "I think that is very much related to the fact that women were not encouraged to study STEM fields in the earlier days and that was a big component of starting our We Can Help Your Mom campaign," said Damen, which focuses on digital literacy for older women. "ere are so many older women that were not ever encouraged to study and to become comfortable with computer science topics, and we really feel like giving them a safe and accessible place where they can learn just as well as anyone else can, we hope to help... deal with that problem." Power of tech As with many volunteer organizations, Connected Cana- dians is actively searching for new funding. "One of the reasons I really wish we had more money for our programs is a lot of the seniors who are lower income have really old, terrible devices and if we had the budget to do so, we would be able to give them something better to work with. We're constrained to the devices that they have right now," said Joaniss. When the seniors discover the power of the technology, "it's like bringing a kid to a library and just seeing all the knowledge that's out there," she said. "at's one of the huge drivers behind why we do this, because we feel like it's such an unfair thing that there's this huge portion of our population that are basically ignored, and not given these tools…. We want to help change that." In the future, the pair has new programs in store. "One program is smartphones for seniors, mainly because we realized that having a combination of old laptops, old computers and all devices makes a barrier for them to connect; having more acceptable technology in a form of something that is compact and usable is the best medium for connectivity in reaching the seniors," said Joaniss. e rewards for the free programming come from a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, said Damen. "From my perspective, it's not that we feel like we're going to teach every senior how to use technology effectively — of course, we would love to be able to do that — but we want to be able to provide the option for every Canadian senior to gain training if they so wished, (and) to understand what that training could mean to them." A lot of employers have volunteer hours, which people don't use." Credit: Rocketclips, Inc. (Shutterstock) Volunteers take advantage of their interactions with seniors to better understand the different types of clients they are developing software for, says Emily Jones Joaniss of Connected Canadians.

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