Tag Archives: elders

The Tech Volunteering Group Urgently Needed Everywhere

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When people talk about helping seniors, they usually focus on food or transportation. That’s nice and necessary, but seniors – people 65 and over – often have great need of a different kind of critical assistance: help with computers, smartphones, printers and the Internet.

There are seniors all across the USA, and probably in other countries as well, with tablets, printers and other devices that are sitting idle because, at some point, the Internet connection broke and they don’t know how to fix the connection. Or there are viruses on the computer and they can’t figure out how to get them off. They may need the text size or color contrast on their computer or smart phone adjusted. Or need software updated, especially anti-virus software. Or need to know how to put photos from their smartphone onto a laptop or a free online space like Flickr so that if anything happens with their phone, they still have their photos.

Just like everyone else, seniors are asked to fill out forms online, to print out forms, sign them, scan them and send them back to someone, to find urgently-needed medical insurance information online, book airline tickets, complete their taxes online, and on and on. If the printer stops connecting to the Internet, or the attachment got downloaded to a device but the user can’t find it, it can mean the senior misses out on much-needed government benefits or even medical care – or even loses money.

Consider this: my neighbor is very nearly homebound – she can manage grocery shopping and doctor visits, and that’s pretty much it. She needed to send in forms to an agency that handles her retirement funds. She had the paper forms from a brochure they had mailed her via traditional postal mail. She filled out the paperwork and sent it in via traditional mail, but because she can’t figure out what’s wrong with her printer, she didn’t scan the paperwork first. The company called and said a page was missing and that she needed to send it in, but she did not have copies and her laptop is broken – she accesses the Internet only via her Smartphone, and it was too hard to navigate the company web site to find the forms. Even if she could, she could not print out the material she needed, nor scan it and submit it. Luckily, I was able to help out with printing out the material, scanning her signed paperwork and sending it via email from my own home.

But I started thinking about all the elderly people out there who need to use their computers and printers and Internet access but just cannot figure out how it all works – and also have no idea who to call for help. And often, there are no funds to pay for a home visit by a computer assistance consultant, if such exists in their area at all.

An added bonus of volunteers helping with tech issues and restoring Internet access for seniors: helping with social isolation/loneliness. Remember that Meals on Wheels isn’t just about delivering food: it’s also about delivering a smile and checking in to make sure a person is okay – and if they aren’t, volunteers call family members, appropriate services, etc. Why not a tech help volunteer group doing the same?

This type of volunteer support doesn’t have to be every day. It could be one day a month: Tech Tuesday. It could be done in association with other events at a senior center or library.

These tech volunteers could:

  • Set up and help at cybercafe in a retirement home.
  • Help seniors use computer and Internet resources provided at a public library.
  • Help new users at a cybercafe or public Internet access point to connect with information and their loved ones.
  • Help seniors with issues they may have smart phones, computers, wi fi networks and printers in their home.
  • Set up a Wii gaming system at a retirement home and train the residents on how to use Wii for fitness and to maintain mental agility.
  • Review phone and Internet bills by seniors and make sure they are getting a good deal or not being charged for services they don’t use.
  • Have workshops on how to use different apps, how to avoid online scams, etc.

(This resource can help you better understand issues elders may have regarding networked devices.)

There’s no need to create a new nonprofit to do these things: any senior-serving nonprofit in a given area could recruit and engage such volunteers. For instance, Northshore Senior Center, Bothell, Washington offers a Health and Wellness Computer Learning Lab – for a $40 flat fee, seniors can get help with laptops that are “running slow, acting weird or frozen again.” El Dorado County in east-central California offers offers similar tech help services to seniors. So does the Cambridge Senior Center in Massachusetts. Here’s a long list of computer classes for seniors offered in the Berkeley area by the University of California Berkeley’s Retirement Center.

Recruiting interested volunteers would probably be no problem, particularly if there is a college or university or large employer nearby and volunteer requirements after vetting and training are just one or two days a month. A greater challenge to such a program is the screening, training, support and supervision these volunteers would need, to ensure the safety of everyone involved and to ensure the program is working, as well as the liability insurance a senior center would have to have (if they don’t have such already).

Volunteers would need to:

  • Undergo a criminal background check. A previous conviction will not necessarily preclude a person from volunteering; it would depend on the nature of the offense, the number of years since a conviction and the references the volunteer provides as to whether or not a conviction is a deal breaker. For instance, any conviction related to theft or fraud would preclude a volunteer from participating, but a 20-year-old conviction for trespassing because someone cut across railroad tracks to get to the grocery store shouldn’t be a concern. Volunteers would need to pay for this background check themselves.
  • Be interviewed before service, to ensure they have the verbal skills and demeanor for such support volunteering.
  • Be tested before service to ensure they have the skills needed, know where to find resources online to guide them in their service, etc.
  • Go through an orientation or training, where they learn how to interact with seniors, about maintaining confidentiality, about working with people with limited eyesight or hearing, limited mobility, and diminishing memory, etc.
  • Learn how to spot signs of inappropriate behavior on the part of any volunteers, clients or staff and how to report such.
  • Meet with program supervisors – which can also be volunteers – to ensure things are going well, challenges are being addressed, etc.

A way to ensure safety if volunteers are going to elders’ home is to require volunteers to visit in pairs and for elderly clients to log all visits by a volunteer on their own and to share these periodically with the agency.

If you emphasize to volunteers that the elderly are a vulnerable population and must be kept safe they will understand the bureaucracy around their volunteering, just as volunteers with Big Brother Big Sisters or other organizations do.

Quite frankly, every senior center should be exploring this idea. They should use the text here to post their own proposal to their own web site, survey the seniors in their community about the need for such a program, create a budget for what their own version of such a program would look like, and get busy attracting funding. This is a perfect crowdfunding project!

And for evaluation once you launch? There are MBA and social work Master’s programs at universities in every state – should be quite easy to find a student or even an entire class who could evaluate your program for you after six months or a year.

Also see:

Answering tough volunteer involvement questions

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Here are two questions regarding volunteer engagement I am seeing a lot through various channels… but not seeing many answers to:

Where can young children – children under 13, even as young as 6 – volunteer? What kinds of activities can they do and exactly where can they do these?

and

Where can people with diminishing mental abilities, or with mental disabilities, volunteer? What kinds of activities can they do and exactly where can they do these?

The first set of questions come from parents, as well as children under 13, on various online discussion groups, like YahooAnswers.

The second set of questions come primarily from volunteer managers – from those in charge of recruiting and involving volunteers at an organization – and are often the result of a long-time, beloved volunteer becoming less and less capable of helping, and requiring so much supervision and assistance that the organization feels the benefits of involving the volunteer are far below the costs. Or, that volunteer becoming verbally abusive, or saying inappropriate things to other volunteers, as a result of their diminished mental capabilities. But I’ve also seen the question asked by siblings, parents and other caretakers of people with mental disabilities.

I’m very disappointed not to see organizations that are supposed to have the promotion of volunteerism as the central focus of their mandate jumping in to answer these questions. Where are you, Points of Light Foundation? Hands On Network? Why aren’t you out there on various online fora, such as YahooAnswers, addressing these tough questions about volunteering?

Anyway…

I’m not at equating children and people with diminished mental capacities. These are two VERY different groups. But they do have one thing in common: they require much more planning, support and staff time to involve than adult volunteers. Hence why I’m discussing these two groups at once here in this blog.

The reality is that it’s more efficient, economical and immediately beneficial for most nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and charities to involve adult individual volunteers who can successfully complete a project, from start to finish, with minimum supervision. Also, most organizations do not have the money, staff, time and other resources to create volunteering opportunities focused primarily on fulfilling the needs of various types of volunteers, rather than creating volunteering activities that are focused primarily on fulfilling the needs of an organization (I’ve said this about microvolunteering as well!). For most organizations, volunteer engagement is primarily about fulfilling the organization’s mission, not fulfilling the wishes of volunteers.

If you think nonprofits, NGOs, charities and others should involve everyone who wants to volunteer, no matter the volunteers’ ages or abilities, then consider this: no matter what your job is, no matter what sector you work in (for-profit, government, nonprofit, whatever), could YOU come up with a safe, fun, meaningful hour-long activity for a 10 year old child to do in your office twice a week, or a two-hour weekly activity for a dozen 10 year olds to do in your office, and do you have time to supervise that child or those children during that activity? What about creating similar activities for someone who has severe short-term memory loss? If you could not do it in your own job at such-and-such corporation, why do you expect nonprofit organizations to do so?

Just as creating one-time, short-term group volunteering activities for adults is difficult, creating volunteering opportunities for children, or for people with diminished or diminishing mental abilities, is also difficult. Should a nonprofit, NGO or charity be spending time and resources to involve these groups? In some circumstances, yes.

First, think carefully about what is in it for you, the organization or program, to create opportunities for either of these groups. What benefit are you looking for?:

  • measurable results regarding participant or community awareness of a particular issue, program or your organization. Could the volunteering activity help children understand a particular issue? Could the activity help parents or family issues understand the issue more fully?
  • cultivation of donors who would be interested in funding this part of your organization’s program. The staff time to create opportunities and support these volunteers, the materials needed by volunteers, etc. all need funding. Are there foundations, corporate philanthropy programs, government agencies or individual donors who would be attracted to funding the resources required?
  • activities that fulfill your organization’s mission. The volunteering experience results in activities that reach part of your organization’s mission. For instance, if you work with seniors, particularly those with diminished mental faculties, then involving these seniors as volunteers would be a part of your mission. If your organization is focused on children under 13, then involving those children as volunteers would be a part of your mission.

I wrote a page on creating one-time, short-term group volunteering activities, and it includes a long list of activity suggestions. Some of those could be adapted as volunteering activities for children, or for people with very limited mental capacities – but not all of them. And to be honest, I’m stumped on creating voluntering activities for either of these groups.

Not every organization is going to be able to address any of those three bullet points – and, therefore, is not going to be in a position to create volunteering opportunities for either of these special needs groups. What I advise those organizations to do:

  • For those that are getting called by parents who want their children to volunteer, have a list of other organizations in your area to refer their child to. For instance, for girls, I recommend the Girl Scouts of the USA (or, in other countries, Girl Guides). I also have a web page of recommendations for family volunteering – specifically families that include children under 16 – note that many activities are home-based.
  • For those that ask about volunteers with diminished mental capacities – for instance, an organization that finds a long-term volunteer can no longer undertake any of the volunteering opportunities at the organization, could a placement be found elsewhere?  Is there a community theater that could involve him or her to hand out programs before a performance? Could the volunteer help serve refreshments at an event – just putting cups filled with a liquid, not doing any of the fillings of the cups him or herself? And does the family of this person understand that a family member will have to be with the volunteer at all times? Or is there an organization in your community that helps people with diminishing mental capacities that you could introduce the volunteer to, that could give that person meaningful activities to engage in – like going to community events in a group? Does this volunteer attend events by a community of faith (a church, temple, mosque, etc.), and could that community be called on to help in this situation?

What other advice do you have for parents seeking volunteering activities for young children, or nonprofit organizations that are going to have to let a volunteer go because of diminished mental capabilities? Leave your answers in the comments. What I’m particularly interested in: how did you go about letting a long-time volunteer go that you had to let go because of his or her diminished mental capabilties, and what did you learn from that expereince that you would like to share with others?

Also see:

Creating one-time, short-term group volunteering activities

Recommendations for family volunteering – specifically families that include children under 16

 

Baby Boomer Volunteers – don’t believe all of the hype

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Volunteer researchers and consultants have been talking about how new retirees from the “Baby Boomer” generation (born between 1946 and 1964) will affect volunteer support and involvement since at least the 1990s. I did a presentation back in 1998 or so about such, to an incredulous audience; I did an updated version of the same presentation just this year, more than 10 years later, and the audience was completely receptive, probably because they have already worked with so many volunteers from that generation.

The Baby Boomer generation volunteers differently than the greatest generation – that’s something I think most everyone agrees on. However, some of the expectations and predictions about what more Baby Boomer volunteers really mean for volunteer managers are… well, they are “out there.” Andy Fryer does a great job at his December OzVPM blog of talking about the realities of involving Baby Boomer volunteers — and countering the hype. It’s Australia-focused, but what he says really applies to most of the Western world, including the USA.

And speaking of Australian colleagues, be sure to subscribe to Martin Cowling’s new blog!