Program to help seniors order groceries aids research
‘Intellectual mandate’
One of the first things that happened at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was people began ordering their groceries online because they were afraid to shop in crowded supermarkets.
That had Constance Lafontaine wondering what less tech-savvy senior citizens were doing.
“It was a realization that I’m going online to get my groceries and I don’t know what the older adults I work with are doing, the people who don’t have access to the Internet and who are being told to stay indoors,” said Lafontaine, who is associate director of the Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) research lab at Concordia University.
That centre looks at how aging populations deal with new forms technology.
“We thought it was really connected to our intellectual mandate,” Lafontaine said.
That’s how they came up with COVID-19 Grocery Response N.D.G., which helps deliver groceries to people aged 70 and up in the Notredame-de-grâce neighbourhood. The project was started in 2020 and organized by ACT in partnership with the NDG Senior Citizens’ Council and the New Hope Senior Citizens’ Centre. With the aid of volunteers, they set up a 1-800 number and helped seniors order groceries. A Provigo supermarket in the city’s west end made the deliveries free of charge.
“There was a steady group of older adults who got groceries over the course of the year,” Lafontaine said. “We did about 2,000 deliveries.”
The project was studied by researchers at Concordia.
One of the key issues for Lafontaine is that older adults living in poverty tend to have much less access to the Internet. For a number of reasons, the project will end May 1. That’s partly because their clientele is becoming vaccinated and also many have figured out other ways to get their groceries, including help from friends, family and neighbours.