Innovation: Elderly people now online – school in the afternoon
Bulgaria
AAI Domains:
Capacity and enabling environment (use of ICT)
Participation in society (inter-generational activity, social connectedness)
Independent, healthy and secure living (lifelong learning)
Social isolation and loneliness are a major risk to public health and particularly affect older people who may have reduced mobility and declining social networks. This is an issue that affects older people across the European Union (and beyond) but is particularly salient in new member states that face both an ageing population along with migration of young people from rural areas to urban areas in search of greater economic opportunities. This combination of population ageing and migration can leave older people in rural areas at greater risk of social isolation and loneliness but Skype provides a potentially accessible solution to enable communication.
In the Konstanin Velichkov Mathematics Secondary School in the village of Patalenitsa (population c.1,200) in Pazardjik district of the South-Central region an innovative solution was developed to address the potential social isolation and loneliness of older people in the locality. It was a solution developed both by the school board and older people in the community and involved school pupils teaching older people how to use ICT with a particular focus on Skype to enable them to keep in touch with their families and friends. The ‘school in the afternoon’ initiative involved older people from the local senior club receiving ICT and Skype tuition at the local secondary school from pupils with the support of school teachers.
The short course that lasts for two weeks provides opportunities for older people to learn how to use ICT and Skype and for younger people to build up social relationships with older people in their community. The project operated with initial support from the EU Grundtvig programme and the Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation and produced 10 older graduates in its first year of operation and 9 in the second wave. While these are only small numbers of older people it has to be viewed in the context of a sparsely populated area of Bulgaria with relatively limited economic resources for elderly people.
In relation to active ageing, it provides a good framework for lifelong learning through the use of ICT to increase social connectedness through inter-generational activity. These factors are all likely to have positive effects on the health and well-being of older people and potentially inspire younger people to have positive views of older people. This particular social innovation operates on a small scale but the concept – older people learning from school pupils how to use Skype to increase their social connectedness – is one that could be adopted and adapted to suit local circumstances in a wide range of contexts.