The Grandparents & Grandchildren initiative is about adult digital literacy improvement: it is aimed to promote and facilitate digital active citizenship of elderly people.
The project's scope is to foster a process of local stakeholders involvement in supporting low cost training initiatives aimed to allow elderly people to gain full citizenship in the digit society.
The most original aspect of the initiative is that the teachers of the elderly are young volunteer students, who have the role of 'grandchildren' assisting on a one to one basis the 'grandparents' in learning the very basic of internet browsing and e-mail messaging. The project thus strongly encourages the intergenerational dialogue as well as linguistic diversity and local cultural issues.
The G&G initiative is a trial to merge:Â enthusiasm with experience, movement with rest, dreams with destiny, youth with wisdom, innovation with aging.
The project responsible would like to have future and past helping each other to use technology to foster citizenship, personal growth and mutual understanding.
In other words, to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom for a better life in modern times.
Policy Context
The initiative refers to an idea experimented for the first time in Italy by AIM (Associazione Interessi Metropolitani, in Milan) in 1998 called "Nonni e Nipoti", which was transferred in other Italian regions by ENAIP which, afterwards transferred it also into other european countries with an EU eLearning project, then extended thanks to a GRUNDTVIG learning partnership which is still ongoing.
The project has been awarded the LLP 2010 Award as best project for "ICT for social Inclusion" in the LLP programme annual meeting held in Barcelona on the 19 May 2010.
Description of target users and groups
The elderly have been not exposed to new technologies at school nor in their working years. Now they found themselves in a condition of "digital illiteracy" Â restraining them from a full access to the new services allowed by the digital technology.
The elderly usually consider computers and technology with fear, thinking of them as complicated and difficult. They need a friendly, simple, non competitive, free of charge approach.
This is the main target group of the G&G initiative, which, on the other hand, had the occasion to verify during the pilot experience in some of the partner countries (Finland and Sweden in particular) that the approach adopted is very suitable also for the immigrant population.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The G&G initiative is carried out locally by a number of different partners which, participating to the EU funded project, were in charge to translate (and adapt to local needs if necessary) all the G&G pedagogical set in their local language and to experiment in at least one pilot test the G&G methodology, thus evaluating the quality of the training resources.
The G&G methodology foresees training seminars carried out by the "grandchildren" which are very short and made on a one-to-one (one grandchild tutors one grandparent). Further activities of self training carried out by the "grandparents" in the laboratories are foreseen to allow the elderly to learn by doing with their own pace.
The initiative flow follows a very simple -and effective- scheme:
1. A tutor trains the grandchildren
In each school, partner of the G&G initiative, groups of volunteer students adhere to the project, thus being trained to take the part of "grandchildren".
They are trained by a tutor, which will assist them also in their training activities with the "grandparents", about the aged adults training methods and about the ICT contents to be taught.
2. Each grandchild trains a grandparent
In each school, partner of the G&G initiative, an ICT laboratory connected with internet is available. In the laboratory each "grandchild" teaches one "grandparent":
- how to access and browse the internet;
- how to use e-mail to communicate on-line;
- how to access local on-line services available on internet.
3. The grandparents self-practice in the laboratory
In each school, partner of the G&G initiative, a laboratory is made available free of charge for further practicing by the grandparents, assisted by a tutor. The "grandparents" have access to the on-line training resources made available on the G&G multilingual website.
Technology solution
The website www.geengee.eu  is a website built with a proprietary platform which is able to manage the remote editing of pages in a multi-language environment, thus allowing all the partners to work within a common frame sharing common resources and loading local ones.
The use of this resources request to the final user only an internet browser and a PC connected to internet.
Technology choice: Standards-based technologyMain results, benefits and impacts
- Adult digital literacy improvement to promote and facilitate active citizenship :
The project's scope is to foster a process of local stakeholders involvement in supporting low cost training activities aimed to develop the adult's digital literacy levels thus allowing elderly people to gain full citizenship in the digital society;
- Activation of a training setting able to encourage inter-generational dialogue :
The involvement of secondary upper school, VET and university students in the role of volunteer "digital educators" make of this ICT learning approach a tool to foster the encounter between generations;
- Linguistic diversity and specific contents to address local culture issues :
The project respects Europe's linguistic diversity, having its outputs in several languages it addresses cultural issues taking in account the characteristics of the elders population and the on-line services available in each country developing local specific contents.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableTrack record of sharing
The G&G project partnership is strongly interested to widen the group of institutions, schools, VET centres experimenting and using the G&G tools and the methodology. All the materials developed by the G&G project are thus made available for free and downloadable from this website. Those organization interested in using them can:
- simply access and use the training pages available under the Gym menu, download the user guides for grandparents and grandsons from the Manuals and guides menu, and use them. We only ask you to quote the G&G project as the author and source of the didactic materials and to send us a description of the activity for which you used the tools and a feed back about the quality and usefulness of the lessons and guides (this modality can be of particular interest for all those who will find the materials already developed in their own mother language by the G&G project partners);
- if you live in a country whose language is not covered by the G&G project's partnership, ask to join the G&G project "extended partnership". The candidature, if approved by the G&G initiative project partners, should imply the interest and commitment by the new partner to translate in its local language the web pages of the G&G website, the materials developed for the Gym's training units, the grandparents and grandsons manuals.
 The "extended" partner will take advantage of a support by the G&G projects experience, receiving instructions about how to organize G&G activities, the authorization to use the official freebies set developed, hints and support for the promotional activities necessary to launch and organize G&G activities in their own country, access to the on-line community archives and forums.
Lessons learnt
This initiative has demonstrated the following characteristics:
- very simple, effective and original learning setting : it works beautifully and it is greatly appreciated both by 'grandparents' and 'grandchildren';
- very low cost: it uses the school laboratories or existing open spaces available when they are not used by the students, the teachers are volunteers (apart for the trainer assisting the grandchildren), the training resources are free of charge;
- very strong transferability: it takes a few weeks to set up the entire training resources set in a new language.
- very high visibility on media;
- it is rather easy to find sponsors in the private sector;
- it links very well to other social inclusion projects (i.e. immigrants);
- very strong intergenerational and intercultural fall out.
 In other words: it matches almost all the EU objectives of social inclusion and cultural development for active digital citizenship.
Scope: Local (city or municipality)