Three local Girl Scouts help seniors navigate technologY
Submitted by Dolorez Dumas-Aris
Scouts Hanna Hageboeck, Isabella Aris-Dumas, and Sierra Lashinsky at Carlton Senior Living Facility in Pleasant Hill during the 2018 holiday break. Photo provided
Lafayette Girl Scouts Isabella Aris-Dumas, Hanna Hageboeck and Sierra Lashinsky - members of Girl Scout Troop No. 32986-will be recognized by Girl Scouts of Northern California and receive their Silver Award pins and certificates this June. This award gives girls the chance to practice their leadership skills and make their community better in the process.
For their Silver Award project, the girls both recognized and empathized with the first-hand challenges that seniors encounter as they struggle to navigate the challenges of today's high tech driven society. They met with business leaders and experts in both the nonprofit and for-profit senior care industry, and with the help of their advisors, developed a class curriculum to help teach seniors the iPhone basics. In order to ensure that their students would have a concrete "take away" and that their teaching would be sustainable, the girls also created a teaching booklet to share with their students and arranged for a local printing business to donate the printing cost.
The three Scouts hosted their first iPhone class for seniors at the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church in Lafayette and have met with sixth- and seventh-grade local troops to share the curriculum and contacts for another troop to carry on as Girl Scout Troop No. 32986's Learning Legacy. These Girl Scouts will package up their soft and hard files and train a troop (or small sub-group) to administer the curriculum and conduct their own classes when they're in the eighth grade.
"There's a stereotype out there that young people are not interested in anything other than themselves. These Girl Scouts prove that stereotype wrong," said elder law attorney Kathryn Schofield.
As a part of their Learning Legacy Promise, the Girl Scouts are targeting six local senior centers in the community, and thanks to the donation by Minuteman Press, they'll have a supply of their "iPhone Basics & Beyond" booklets printed to share at these centers. In the back of the booklet will be the Troop email address so if there's anyone out there that needs iPhone assistance, the Girl Scouts can address that need.
The Scouts will bridge at Disneyland at the bridge of Cinderella's castle in June.
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