I participated in Genconnect in terms 2 and 3 this year. The experience was enriching and rewarding, and the interactions with residents greatly improved my ‘effective communication’ skills.

In my life I haven’t had as much opportunity to talk to people other than my family and friends. From my experience I learnt it can be a rare and wonderful opportunity to engage with those from different walks of life. Over the 8 hours we spent with each resident we built strong connections and improved our skills in active listening, persuasion, empathy, using appropriate language and taking in their feedback.

In Term 2 I worked with a lady who was already proficient in technology but needed assistance to enhance her connections with family in light of covid-19 risks. It soon became clear that she was already proficient in technology and seemed to get more value from us listening with empathy to her stories.

Later in term 3 we worked with a resident who said he needed help using his iPhone and Mac and had almost no prior knowledge. There were times he seemed resistant to learning, and wanted to quit but through constant encouragement and support he pushed through, and on the last session admitted that we had made a huge difference in his life. By teaching him to play music we had helped him connect with the sentiment and emotions attached to the music from his past.

We also became quickly aware that we couldn’t use technology terminology we were familiar such as click, cursor and search bar, which were meaningless to the elderly who hadn’t grown up with technology. To explain Google, we related it in a context the residents would understand. Google was the world’s largest library and the search bar was asking the librarian to locate books on a topic. We helped the residents understand technology through changing our language to be more relatable to their lives.