Vitademia
In March 2020, I came up with the idea to empower retirees by enabling them to act as life coaches and mentors to their younger peers, who are seeking for answers to help them grow and overcome life challenges.
In current society, the two most vulnerable age groups are young people in their 20s and senior citizens in retirement, with loneliness being one of the root problems.
For the younger generation, social media has consumed a significant portion of their daily communication with others, meaning people are talking less in real life than before. This leads to severe self-isolation and quite often the inability to find the right answers to hurdle the many obstacles we face during our life journey. With multigenerational households becoming less and less common, particularly in developed countries, sharing knowledge and wisdom between different age groups is becoming severely stunted.
For the elder generation, this also has significant impact in the sense that they feel less and less purposeful in society after retirement. Retirees often feel left behind and share a sense of abandonment if they are not digitally competent. This is not to say they are isolated, because retirement homes and communities have been rapidly growing. However, this segregation by age is having a negative impact on society, as intergenerational communication and understanding are being stifled, day by day.
To sum this all up, generation gaps have never grown so rapidly in human history amid the exponential growth in technology. However, I strongly believe that we can lessen this gap by doing the following:
- building more communication channels between the young and old
- showing more appreciation for wisdom and knowledge gained through life experiences
- empowering retirees with essential skill set to communicate effectively in the digital age
Vitademia aims to provide a library of e-learning courses that tackle some of life's most difficult challenges. These courses would be developed by retirees who provide their wisdom in written form. Learners can "study" these courses at their own time online, whilst being guided by a team of dedicated coaches and mentors who specialise in the given subject. Coaching and mentoring sessions will take place online using video conferencing tools such as Skype, Google Hangouts or Zoom.