My Last Song has signed up to Race Online 2012, the Government backed initiative to get as much of the adult population of the UK online by the end of 2012 as possible.

One of the target groups is older people, and so My Last Song was welcomed as a Race Online partner organisation because the website will encourage older people to be more computer literate and able to benefit from going online for information, for company, for support and for greater independence.

The problem is reaching those older people who have very low computer skills or don’t have access to a computer and therefore won’t have the opportunity to go online.

To solve this problem, I have come up with a proposed intergenerational communication initiative.  It is focussed on the benefits offered by the Lifebox within My Last Song to older people to whom it is an area to store their funeral wishes, letters of wishes and other details required by their executors and close family members when they die or are terminally ill.

The Lifebox also encourages people to store their memories, their life stories, their achievements, details of their friends and families, their hobbies and their images so that future generations have an accurate insight of their life and times.

This is a valuable way of recording family history which otherwise is likely to be lost.

Very few families these days sit down around the dinner table or in front of the fire and listen to older members relate the details and achievements of their lives and the lives of their older relatives.

So, to take the place of this intergenerational passing down of family history, I am proposing a scheme whereby children between six and 12 nominate an older member or members of their family who aren’t computer competent or haven’t got access to their own computers who they will coach and encourage to fill their Lifeboxes.

In the process, they will learn about the life and times of the older family members, and also know where this information is stored so it can be accessed by future generations.

I will be putting more substance on the proposal and then contact the Department for Education in an attempt to get this off the ground.

It will undoubtedly be supported by Race Online 2012. However, the kind of backing that would be more useful is that of a retailer or supplier of PCs.  So, if the likes of Currys, Comet, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Acer, IBM, HP stumble across this blog and the proposal sounds interesting, please get in contact.

My efforts at getting a worthwhile intergenerational communications initiative off the ground will be chronicled with, I hope, an outcome that has benefits for several thousand older people, their young family members, future social historians, the suppliers of PCs and, of course, My Last Song.

Tags: Currys, Dell, funeral wishes, IBM, intergenerational communication, Lifebox, older people, PCs, Race Online 2012, social history, Sony

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Planning for the end. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.