Rick Crust, Age Concern and Silver Surfers

I visited Rick Crust of Age Concern Hackney on Friday December 4th, . We were to discuss the Silver Surfers project there, but discovered other shared interests as well.

Silvers Surfers aims to help people who are over fifty to become Internet-savvy, and to get more out of life through using the Internet. The Silver Surfer group at Hackney is unusual in the number of members who were born in West Africa, especially Ghana and Nigeria.

The email introducing us had said “Pam is interested in projects that communicate between African communities in the UK and Africa and intergenerational projects. As such, I think she'd appreciate a visit to the Lawns and talking to you and some of the people that use it. I've explained that there's formal teaching sometimes, therefore it's probably better for the visit to take place during a drop in.”

I had also been told “Here's the website which has contact details and general information: http://hackneysilversurfers.org.uk/ ”

It turned out that Rick himself also has connections with Africa, having lived and worked in Zimbabwe. This means he has an excellent understanding of the difficulties facing many people in Africa when they try to go online.

Already I have some practical information from Rick about www4mail. This is an email browser for people who have an email address, but no access to the World-Wide Web.

We will continue to explore ideas for collaboration.