Selfie, Facebook or Youtube are no longer unknown notions to some older people. 40 older women and men from Mitoc and Donici communities, Orhei district, received mobile phones connected to the Internet and will soon learn how to use them. It is about some new beneficiaries selected under the second phase of the intergenerational dialogue program.

Efrosinia Frunze from Donici village is 70 years old and says that she mainly wants to learn how to make video calls ‘I am looking forward to surprising my grandchildren and daughter who live abroad. With volunteer’s help, I also want to create a social media account to keep up with informational technologies.’

Nigina Abaszada, UNFPA Resident Representative in Moldova, spoke to older people from Donici and Mitoc about the importance of intergenerational dialogue, especially during the pandemic.

‘The mobile phone you received today will help you build a communication bridge with the young generation. It is very important to maintain this bond for you to feel support and to communicate with your loved ones, especially in a pandemic. With Internet access, you will stay connected to social life, you will be able to follow news, to access social services.’

Older people will take part in a range of trainings where, with the help of young volunteers, they will learn how to use the devices, how to take a photo and post it on social networks, how to surf the Internet, how to make audio and video calls, how to pay bills online etc. The first trainings have already started in Mitoc and Donici.

Caroline Tissot, Director of Swiss Cooperation Office in Chisinau: Nowadays, if you do not have a smartphone, many services can not be accessed. To ensure that older people are not excluded from social life, we have provided them with mobile phones to be able to access various services, stay connected with young family members, with relatives abroad. Older people, with their life experience, have a lot to share with young people and young people in turn, can introduce older people to the digital world. Thus, these activities will bring them together and everyone will benefit from intergenerational dialogue.

‘A mobile phone is a gateway to all kinds of information’, says Irina Strajescu, Executive Director of the Moldcell Foundation. ‘Absolutely all of us can learn to use such a tool connected to the Internet for various purposes: to find songs that we haven’t listened for a long time, recipes, to chat, to read news, articles about gardening, anything’, added Irina Strajescu.

The intergenerational dialogue project is funded by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Moldcell Foundation and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and implemented by HelpAge International in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Social Protection of the Republic of Moldova in 15 Moldovan communities from Orhei, Rezina, Soldanesti, Basarabeasca, Leova, Straseni districts.