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The Knowledge Volunteers also include foreign students that attend Italian schools. Brian (18) is from Peru and attends the fourth year at the Istituto d’istruzione superiore Lucio Anneo Seneca in Rome. This is the second year he works as a tutor for over-sixties who attend the digital literacy course for elders.
Brian arrived in Italy with his family when he was 8 years old and did not speak a word of Italian. Today, you’d mistake him for a Roman native. He speaks just like every other young Roman.
Brian has had no problems working as a tutor. As a matter of fact, he is very curious about the elders and their experiences from a far away world. Nor was he put off by the fact that many of his students began the course with absolutely no knowledge of computers. It made him feel like a true “teacher.”
“The emotion of teaching someone something is fantastic,” confesses Brian.
The school, which has already organized Grandparents on the Internet courses in the past, is now also one of the main hubs for Project Amongst Generations – United for Work. All these activities are coordinated by the mathematics and physics teacher Annunziata Violi.
The experience accumulated with the inter-generational learning model and the Network of Knowledge Volunteers has led to Project 21st Century Volunteers conceived and developed by Alfonso Molina, Professor of Technology Strategy at the University of Edinburgh and Scientific Director of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
21st Century Volunteers are young students who work on social innovation projects and at the same time acquire useful competences for working and living as responsible citizens (problem solving, social responsibility, collaborative work, creativity). Volunteers can participate in a series of activities, including: digital literacy courses for elders with the inter-generational learning model and social projects to understand and improve local environments and their communities. In fact, this also helps them learn about the working world.
