Saturday, September 19, 2020

Fun and Learning with the Wise!

























Do you have an elderly person in your family/neighbourhood who is extremely knowledgeable in any specific area, which could be of interest to others? For example, traditional Indian recipes, medicinal herbs, the history of a particular place, events from a particular era, or an interesting craft or skill that few people have. Or are they great story tellers, of old traditional Indian stories and folk tales that have not been documented?

Would they be happy to speak about it to a general audience, on a Zoom call? Can they speak reasonably well in English? If yes, would love to hear from you. 😃

What is this about?

 A bunch of us ex-colleagues got together virtually during the lockdown to do something around Mental Well-being in the Elderly.  

We are partnering with Silver Talkies to launch a series of sessions where elderly people will share knowledge in a live virtual session for the young and old alike, and interact with them. Our senior citizens have a wealth of knowledge! 

Being mentally engaged and feeling valued go a long way in keeping them happy and alert, and it delays cognitive decline. So this is a small attempt to help with that. 

We did 2 trial sessions with 2 friends' mothers speaking about traditional regional recipes, customized to their families' tastes. It was a great success! And both of them were super-excited though initially nervous. 😊 Their children/grandkids introduced them and made it feel like we are listening in on a family conversation - it was a beautiful experience!

So now we are trying to launch this with Silver Talkies providing the platform.

Guidelines
  • The person should be able to speak reasonable English. Later on we would like to do this in vernacular languages too, but trying to get this off the ground for now, following Silver Talkies guidelines.
  • Would need a family member/friend with them who can help them get on  to the Zoom call that Silver Talkies will set up, keep them company, ask questions, explain questions if needed etc. And if it is in the form of a conversation with the old person, they will also feel more comfortable. 
  • It will be a 1-hour session. Open to anyone. You could forward the Zoom invite to all your family and friends. This is free of charge. 
Please let us know in the comments below if you know of someone. Or mail/message me or one of the people below if you know us personally. 

Thanks!
Asha. For the group (Adarsh, Lekha, Manoj, Prabha)