Senior citizens awarded with certificates for completing their computer training
Inside YMCA's senior citizens literacy programme.
The fourth industrial revolution is gradually taking over and the YMCA is preparing senior citizens to be fully equipped for this new digital era where everything is pretty much done online these days; with the traditional manual way of doing things gradually becoming the thing of the past. O
YMCA in Orlando East awarded senior citizens with certificates for completing their computer training which commenced in August last year under the guidance of Mandla Tshabalala and Angie Letsholo.
Tshabalala revealed that the motivation behind this initiative stemmed from the blatant need to learn they noticed on these senior citizens exposed by their interest for the prominent newspaper—The Star.
“Every day, The Start brings the paper here at DOCC and these old guys queue here for the paper so we thought we needed to come up with the programme that would make them exposed to the digital world. So we came up with a computer literacy programme.” Said Tshabala.
Letsholo is also a coordinator for this computer literacy programme. She added that “We started to announce in August last year and Mandla took over in September up until yesterday. They were attending Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes on Wednesdays as well if they failed to complete a task on Tuesday.
Classes began from 10 till 12.” They started off with twenty learners but due to unforeseen circumstances, the number dropped to ten.
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“We also introduced them a bit to the internet, in turn, they were able to create their own email addresses. After that achievement they started exchanging emails, communicating amongst each other on the classroom ensuring that the emails were working and that they were comprehending the process.”
The programme is cost-free and is open to any senior citizen who wants to learn computer literacy in Orlando East. This programme was made possible by a donation of computers that were made by Absa Bank through their CSI programme.
The computers are said to operate in three folds, one being the computer literacy for senior citizens and other being to teach the youth computer skills and the third fold being the one used by volunteers who teach the youth.
Registrations for the senior citizen computer literacy programme are open and classes are starting this coming August. For more information regarding this initiative and specific requirements, you can go inquire at the YMCA hall in DOCC.
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