DCU-Fingal County Council Age-Friendly Newsletter Initiative

Senior citizens? Maybe. Afraid of technology? Certainly not.

The Fingal Age-Friendly Council contacted DCU due to the needs of their senior citizens. Locals had asked for tuition to up-skill in order to meet their forum's needs. The council enquired if there was a student willing to teach a group on a regular basis.

Further to this enquiry, selected members of Fingal's Senior Citizens Forum undertook to learn Microsoft Publisher over seven weeks at Dublin City University. Their aim was to be able to publish newsletters independently on a quarterly basis.

When approached by DCU's Age-Friendly co-ordinator, Christine O'Kelly, an undergraduate Multimedia student, Rachel Gallen, volunteered for the job and devised a course schedule.  She taught the group on Friday mornings while Masters student, Florian Badelt, provided hands-on help.

Facilitated by DCU's Intergenerational Learning Programme (ILP), the forum members used the ILP's desktop computers downstairs in the Henry Grattan extension. As these desktop screens were bigger than the alternative laptops, they were deemed more 'age-friendly'. It was important that the sessions were held downstairs for accessibility reasons.

With limited computer experience, the forum members embraced the sessions with gusto. Lessons about margins and columns, paragraph formatting and picture resizing were taken on, not with ease initially, but with interest and a refreshing thirst for learning.

Three weeks in, the learners had successfully put together a template and had progressed enough to start filling in content. The students were busy in their spare time writing content and sourcing pictures to go with the articles.

Louise Edmonds, one of Fingal County Council's Age-Friendly crew,  visited during training. This both motivated the team and gave Fingal an insight into the progress being made.

From gardening tips to feature articles covering personal interests, the seniors' newsletter packed it all in. The instructor tracked the progress of the students, as they poured in the content, by circulating pdf forms of what they had done weekly via email.

A great sense of achievement was gained by all involved on successful completion of the course on March 20th. "As one of the generation that grew up before the computer era...I seem to have absorbed quite a bit, and am not quite so slow to try out new things" said one student. She continued by saying that Publisher was much clearer to her now.

When asked about the scheme, Eithne Mallin said "The success of the project is down to the willingness of the DCU and its students to collaborate and the willingness of the senior citizens in Fingal to learn new skills". She also remarked that the seniors had "delivered a newsletter of which they can be very proud". 

The spring publication is to be published on the 27th March 2015. The seniors both met their Easter deadline and up-skilled in doing so. Three cheers on a successful outcome!

For further information on DCU's other courses for people aged over 55, please contact Carmel Conroy (ILP) at 01-7007423 or email ilp.info@dcu.ie. You can keep informed with Fingal's Age-Friendly news at www.agefriendlyfingal.ie

Footnote: Every member of the DCU team involved in this initiative was nominated for a DCU Presidents award 2015. A full list of nominees can be found at https://www.dcu.ie/community/presidents-award-2015.shtml