Title of the Session: Intergenerational and Inter-diversity Activity
Presenter: Hans Kaltwasser, DBSV Head International Relations
INTERGEN : Bringing different generations together
Each generation has to deal with its own obstacles, but also has its own know-how and skills. Young people as a rule have excellent expertise in the new technologies which might be of greatest benefit to their elderly peers. Conversely, a wide range of daily living skills essential to cope with the numerous pitfalls of daily life for visually impaired people and formerly taught at the traditional schools for the blind are quite naturally at seniors’ disposal. Many younger blind and partially sighted people are lacking just these skills, very often because this knowledge is not included in the curricula of integrated schooling. Hence a mutual exchange of experience and skills between young and old would be of great advantage to both sides. How can we bring different generations together so that they can share their knowledge and experience to their mutual benefit? Based on its on-going work with junior and senior visually impaired people, the European Blind Union designed and conducted the Intergen project which involved six partner organizations from the EBU network. During a two-year working period which ran from late 2008 to late 2009 a series of workshops were held in the participating countries where young participants shared their skills with senior peers who were introduced to devices such as mobile phones, emailing systems and specific accessible technologies. In turn, senior participants passed on their skills by teaching younger people how to perform essential daily tasks such as cooking, ironing or gardening. In addition to running creative workshops, the project steering group by benefitting from input from all participants and developed innovative workshop guidelines to encourage others to organize their own intergenerational projects.
Hans Kaltwasser
DBSV Head International Relations
HK/ DBSV, Berlin 25th September 2012