In doing some research for our project I came across another’s wonderful blog that posted on the same topic. Jane, author of the blog Heres to Life, posted the following in August of 2009: http://herestolife.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/bridge-the-generation-gap-by-making-lololola-tech-savvy/. In reading her blog I discovered Teach Lola – an initiative to bridge the communication gap between the younger and older generation, advocated by Bayan Telecommunications after “conducting an informal poll via Plurk and Facebook (2 social networking sites), which revealed that, given the chance, 87% of young people want to continue communicating with their grandparents (lolos and lolas). This same poll revealed that 81% of Filipinos are still close to their grandparents and 57% still visit from time to time. And yet, ironically, the Internet Age is also responsible for further widening the generational gap between a younger set that is used to the internet as a communications and research tool and an older generation that does not know where to begin and is in danger of being left behind.”
The Teach Lola campaign is a fine example of what our group plans to do; address the fact that senior citizens are being left behind in the surmounting ability to communicate through internet and social networking, which has become the most appealing avenue of communication for the young, and if we can give our elders the tools to at least understand email and perhaps even Facebook then how much of a difference would that make it both the lives of the grandparents, children and grandchildren? Maybe the elders could even barter with the younger folks and teach them how to write a real hand-written letter for all of their efforts in stepping up to today’s standards… That could be interesting.
