2024 Community Challenge Grantee: Empowering the Ages

Google “technology training for seniors,” and you’ll find dozens of programs aimed at helping older adults overcome their anxiety about using new devices and navigating technology. Research has linked these fears to diminished quality of life and increased isolation for seniors.

The team at Empowering the Ages (ETA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Rockville, decided to create a fresh solution to technology training for wary seniors while providing them with a new social outlet.

 As ETA was building its “CyberMasters” training program in 2020, the team learned that seniors who had taken other technology courses wanted more individualized attention and explanations in their native languages.

Based on their experience creating other multi-generational community programs, ETA Executive Director and Co-Founder Leah Bradley decided to take the CyberMasters program in a similar direction.

Older adult participants in the CyberMasters program will gain individualized technology coaching from local high school students, who will be trained by ETA to work with seniors. The teens will coach seniors on navigating social media, using smartphones, filling out online forms, sending photos, and accessing health information portals. While the program is open to all residents over 50 in Mongomery County, the training location will be in Gaithersburg.

Instead of one group feeling they’re on the lower rung of the experience, both the seniors and the high school students will have equal footing in terms of what each will gain from the training partnership.

“The teens providing the tech training will get a sense that the community values them. And they’re gaining amazing life skills—developing the social and personal competence to handle anything and effectively communicate with older adults,” Hal Rogoff, ETA Board of Directors president, said.

And the seniors, Rogoff added, will gain a deeper sense of belonging.

As the high school students teach the seniors how to fill out an online form or identify internet scams, the older adults will serve as mentors, helping the teens gain real-world experience for their future jobs when their bosses will probably be older adults.

“Older citizens have stored values—wisdom, financial assets, their presence in the community, which brings stability to the community, “said Hal Rogoff, ETA Board of Directors president.

According to the ETA team, the CyberMasters cross-generational model is an effort to establish opportunities among Boomers and Gen X to develop understanding and respect based on honest dialogue.

According to ETA Executive Director Bradley, the teens will be trained by ETA staff. High school students fluent in Spanish, Chinese, Amharic, and English will also receive aging sensitivity training.

ETA will recruit seniors to participate in the CyberMasters program through the City of Gaithersburg’s senior centers, the Montgomery County Commission on Aging, social media, and the ETA volunteer networks.

The nonprofit plans to use the AARP Community Challenge Grant to pay for training materials, Chromebooks, iPads, Wi-Fi boosters, training volunteers, and outreach to get the word out about the technology training for seniors.

CyberMasters’ continuing mission, Rogoff said, is to help bridge the generation gap between Baby Boomers and Generation Z in Gaithersburg by making it possible for “communities of all ages to contribute to each other’s well-being.”