In August 2020, we received the funding from Awards for All to help get older people digitally literate and physically fit!
In response to social distancing restrictions, we wanted to move our exercise classes online, however, after speaking to our walking football team, we found that 80% of them weren’t on the internet. This problem didn’t stop at our team, our partners at Bramley Elderly Action have spoken with around 1400 of their members (91% of which are in the shielded age category) and found that 95% of them don’t use digital tools or channels. So we had to have a rethink!
It seemed that actually getting people online was a prerequisite to helping people get active from their homes, that’s why we’re launching, ‘Getting Active and Online’, with three main aims:
- Providing tablets with data to cohorts- and also supporting them in their digital training.
- Getting people active- by uploading and streaming a variety of exercise classes, from yoga.
- Tackling social isolation- creating a community around the classes, and facilitating ‘Zoom cafes’ for a natter once he class is finished.
We’ve been working with instructors, Neighbourhood Networks, 100% Digital and volunteers from The University of Leeds to get this project off the ground.
Currently, volunteers from Leeds Uni helped us to train 8 members from Bramley Elderly Action on how to use the tablets over the phone. This has proved challenging- but not impossible- with the help of screen sharing apps like ‘Team Viewer’. We’re now running the same model with members of Richmond Hill Elderly Action.
We’ve been running the live classes every week since November. If you’d like to receive the links, you can sign up here: https://bit.ly/gettingactiveandonline
And the YouTube channel is up and running, here’s the link to that: https://bit.ly/3k3W0f6
