People Helping People

Tony Rothacker spoke about keeping open communication, and discussed building mutual benefit into a social enterprise. He is the co-founder at Youngster.co, which provides job opportunities to youth and empowers elders to use technology better. Youth assist elders with learning new technology they may need to interact with the world, or programs they may need help to use in daily life. Both sides of the connection, youth and elders, benefit from the intergenerational service as the initiative addresses common issues on the respective sides. Opportunities arise from the youth and elders connecting, which is a bonus to the impact of the initiative itself. Young people get paid upfront to help seniors with technology. Tony shared that most youth don’t need any particular training, since the youth grew up with the technology. Elders, however, grew up in a different time. They may not be familiar with the latest technology, but they can teach youth what they learned about life. Tony observed that the initiative