It’s a way to forget about many problems. It’s the definition of computer provided by Ms. Mariantonietta, 74. Mariantonietta attends the Colli Aniene Elderly Centre, one of the 50 Roman elderly centres participating in Telemouse, a project promoting digital literacy among over-sixties run by Telecom Italia and the Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
Each district in the city of Rome has an elderly centre that has been equipped with three computers connected to the Internet for over-sixties, who also attend computer courses in nearby schools. Young students tutor the elders and help them use the computers to practice their newly acquired skills.
Mariantonietta, who is studying computer graphics, also helps the other elderly to navigate the web and use the computers to study. She is a Skype enthusiast and uses it to chat with her friends who live abroad, although she feels a little uneasy, as computers have become a fundamental part of her life!
Her friend Iolanda is 71. Her husband gave her a notebook pc as a retirement gift that she kept in a drawer for two years, but she has now become a computer whiz and even does their accounting on-line. “It’s a window on the world that has allowed me to meet many different people and I even went on vacation to the Dolomites with some of them!” she tells us.
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