Berlin – It’s hard to believe that there hasn’t been an offer like this in Berlin before. A new internet platform, the “Seniors Network Berlin”, bundles Berlin-wide offers from the areas of leisure and education for older people. The senior network, a project of the Berlin State Association of Workers’ Welfare and the Berlin design office place / making, wants to be a digital pin board for non-commercial offers.
Offers for seniors: from the Skat round to the French course
Drinking coffee and being together, gardening together, an Oktoberfest, a course “Switching off and painting” or the “Nefertari belly dance group” – many providers have already published something. Knitting, pottery, Christmas handicrafts, language courses, walks in nature – after many offers for seniors had to suspend in the corona pandemic, courses and encounters are now taking place again. In the future, it should be even easier to find these offers in the city.
The Berlin Senior Citizens Network wants to make it easier for older people to participate in social life. Over 500 entries from the areas of encounter, art and creativity, society, culture, politics, exercise and health, languages and intercultural issues, computers and technology are already online.
Berliner Zeitung / Markus Wächter
Project manager of the senior network at the Arbeiterwohlfahrt: Melanie Thoma.
“It is important that the offers are always non-commercial,” says Melanie Thoma, the project manager at Awo. All incoming offers are checked accordingly. Second criterion for publishing in the senior citizens’ network: the offer must be formulated in language that is as easy to understand as possible. “The senior citizens’ network is a bridge between the offers of various providers and senior citizens in Berlin,” says Thoma. You have already had to refuse offers because they were too expensive. A steamboat trip for 25 euros an hour, for example, cannot be found in the senior network.
Participation in social life is inextricably linked with access to the digital world. This poses challenges for some seniors, not all of them have access to digital technologies. This is where the senior network comes in and wants to promote digital skills.
Info boxes with tablets for digital sovereignty
In addition to the internet platform, there are currently two leisure facilities for senior citizens, at Schillerpark and at the Spandauer Strasse senior citizen leisure center in Mitte, with info boxes available. Here, people can explore the senior network on their tablets under supervision. Two more districts, each with two more info boxes, are to be added.
The senior network can also be accessed from any other computer: the search for leisure and educational offers can then be filtered by language, accessibility, topic, target group or region. Seniors with a migration background are also explicitly taken into account. The offer is to gradually become multilingual and invites you to help shape it. Planned hikes, get-togethers or events can easily be posted and made available to a broader public.
Monika Kuhlmann, who clicks through the offer in the senior citizen leisure center at Schillerpark, can well imagine finding suggestions here in the future. “I use the internet a lot to find recipes,” she says. The 73-year-old is particularly interested in exercise courses. Back school, energy dance, that keeps you fit. There are definitely more challenges for Monika Kuhlmann in the senior citizens’ network.
The project of the Awo regional association Berlin and the development office place / making costs a total of 400,000 euros and was financed by the lottery foundation.
www.seniorennetz.berlin
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