Our project has very much evolved over the course of this year. We started out wanting to teach the elderly in our community the ins and outs of technology. When brainstorming, we decided on tutorials for social media, spam calls, ride-sharing apps and paying your bills online. We were ready to go and excited. We made a needs analysis survey and brought to the first home who would say yes. When meeting with the activities director, she politely smiled and said she had maybe one or two residents she could give the survey to but most were had very little to no technology exposure. On top of that, they rarely received visitors of any kind. This is where our project started to change. How could we ignore what the real need was? These people really just needed a connection with someone. We decided to use technology to develop a connection with our partner rather than the outside world. Rather than focus on technology tutorials at multiple retirement communities in the area, we just focused on making a difference with the seniors at Magnolia Gardens.
Each week brought us new challenges and revelations. Every time we went to the nursing home we would have to adapt. We experienced partners being in the hospital or being too sick to participate. In these situations, we were paired up with new partners and started new relationships. This made some of us emotional and sometimes it was hard to know the right thing to say or how to move forward. We needed to be good at reading our partner and knowing what they needed, even if they needed a nap. We showed our partners their old homes on Google Earth or old songs they enjoyed. This brought back happy memories for them. More than anything we really just listened to them. We wanted them to feel heard and understood. We were surprised at how attached to them we became. Our technology drive was created based on the fact that we didn’t want to leave their lives with no way to contact us or see some of the websites we had shown them. Bringing them technology and tutorials we made to use it made us really happy. Even though we couldn’t visit the home as often, at least we could still keep the connection. This project helped us develop empathy and put ourselves in someone else’s position. It helped us grow and it made us feel like we were really making a difference in the lives of the residents at Magnolia Gardens.
Each week brought us new challenges and revelations. Every time we went to the nursing home we would have to adapt. We experienced partners being in the hospital or being too sick to participate. In these situations, we were paired up with new partners and started new relationships. This made some of us emotional and sometimes it was hard to know the right thing to say or how to move forward. We needed to be good at reading our partner and knowing what they needed, even if they needed a nap. We showed our partners their old homes on Google Earth or old songs they enjoyed. This brought back happy memories for them. More than anything we really just listened to them. We wanted them to feel heard and understood. We were surprised at how attached to them we became. Our technology drive was created based on the fact that we didn’t want to leave their lives with no way to contact us or see some of the websites we had shown them. Bringing them technology and tutorials we made to use it made us really happy. Even though we couldn’t visit the home as often, at least we could still keep the connection. This project helped us develop empathy and put ourselves in someone else’s position. It helped us grow and it made us feel like we were really making a difference in the lives of the residents at Magnolia Gardens.