It is a city-affiliated organization that guides people in their 70s and older on how to use digital devices.
Anna Mudry, who brushed her gray hair neatly, was learning how to send emails to several acquaintances at once. Here, Nicole Martinez, a volunteer who teaches senior citizens how to use digital devices, sat side by side and explained in detail for nearly an hour how to send group mails and create contact groups.
As such, Lugano City has been conducting a digital education program for the elderly every Wednesday and Saturday starting in 2022 centered on college students volunteers. Lugano, which aims to be a city centered on the virtual asset industry, planned a program to help the elderly easily access job information when various job announcements were announced almost online. Recognizing that there are more elderly people who have difficulty using simple digital technologies in the process than expected, the city has greatly expanded the content of education. As a result, many elderly people visit the center to learn simple use of e-mail, online ticket reservation, and complex use of artificial intelligence (AI) programs.
The young volunteers, who majored in communication at the University of Switzerland and Italy (USI), said they are taking a class called “active listening” during the semester. “They use technical terms at universities, but here they learn how to explain them in the easiest and simplest way,” Martinez said.
On the post-it note filled with the wall of the center, there was a thank-you message from elderly students, such as “Thank you to the students for letting me know that I’m not a fool.”
Lugano City emphasizes policies to attract and foster virtual asset industries and related startups, but plans to cover the classes that can be marginalized from digital technology as much as possible. This is because the proportion of the elderly population is never small due to the nature of small cities. Just as the industrial revolution brought about major changes, this is the era of the digital revolution, said Monica Aliflandi, coordinator of the Lugano City job and education project. “Public institutions should help the younger generation and the elderly to respond to this change together.”
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
