In Rostov Region, young volunteers teach Internet to elderly people

The Project entitled "Place Where Generations Meet" (of the Programme "Dialogue Is Rendezvous Place"), executed by the Sholokhov Library - a branch of the Novocherkassk Central Library System - and supported by the Foundation "Memory, Responsibility and Future" (Germany) and the Federal State Institution (FSI) "Fund of Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation" (Moscow), assumes teaching old people in information technologies by volunteers.

"We've thought a lot," Victoria Kolesnikova, project manager and director of the Sholokhov Library, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, "about what is dividing grandchildren and their elderly relatives and concluded that one of the 'conflict points' is right in information technologies. Old people treat them with some caution and don't understand them, while youngsters are enthusiastically 'sitting in the Internet'."

What is separating them should unite them - the authors of the project had concluded and addressed for help to the Novocherkassk youth NGO named "Aly Parus" (Red Sail).

Today, 25 volunteers - senior schoolchildren, students of colleges and South-Russian State Technical University - are training 70 persons aged from 56 to 78. The training groups were set up at the Novocherkassk boarding house for elderly persons and invalids and outpatient section of the city centre of social servicing of population.

Vera Shkuratova, head of the outpatient section, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that at first her patients were afraid of the notebook computers, brought by volunteers, but then they managed to get accustomed quite quickly and now wait for every next lesson with impatience.

"People have different motives: some of them want to keep correspondence with their grandchildren, who live far away, others just want to hold dialogue in the Internet. And we are happy to provide this new sphere of dialogue to our people, having awakened their interest to life," Victoria Kolesnikova said.