Volunteers teach tech to residents
Trainers help troubleshoot problems, provide help learning new software
For many residents of the Downtown Eastside, an older-generation smartphone handed down from a loved one or local charity is a lifeline that gives them access to the internet to apply for a job, get on a housing wait-list or sign up for income assistance.
Sometimes, though, they need a little help figuring out how to use it. And for more than a year the DTES Adult Literacy Roundtable and University of B.C. Learning Exchange have been providing free training at a “technology café” at the Oppenheimer Park Field House.
Each Friday at 10:30 a.m., a handful of trainers throw on a pot of coffee, lay out some snacks, set up a couple of laptops and for two hours help people overcome their technological woes.
“They have technology,” said William Booth of the Literacy Roundtable. “They just don’t necessarily have the latest.”
Some have more difficulty solving their problems than others, such as the man who dropped in with a stack of floppy disks wanting to transfer their contents to his new device (production of the disks ceased in 2011).
Others have no cellular contract, so they rely on public resources to access the internet. They learn about accessing city-provided WiFi at local community organizations, libraries and housing providers, so that they no longer need to squat outside coffee shops.
The cafe’s trainers helped an artist set up an Etsy site, so that he could sell his works online. Another man wanted to get a job but needed to apply online, so they introduced him to the bare basics of using a computer and navigating the web.
He’s among café visitors who have gone on to take six-week courses with the Learning Exchange.
“Now he has a job,” Booth said. “There are some stories like that … a lot of them are just helping people live their life a little better.”
The cafés, run in collaboration with the Carnegie Learning Centre and Vancouver Public Library since August 2016, have brought hundreds of visitors to the field house, typically drawing a dozen people each session.
The Learning Exchange, founded in 1999, links UBC students, staff and faculty with DTES residents to trade knowledge and collaborate on projects.
Dionne Pelan, a coordinator with the Learning Exchange, said the technology cafés are structured to help people whether they need five minutes to troubleshoot a simple problem on their tablet or the entire two-hour session to learn new software on their laptop.
“One of the things that happens a lot is technology changes rapidly, and you and I have the ability to kind of go to places and take a class or take a workshop, or go online and do some of those things to learn about the new technology,” Pelan said. “Folks who are in communities like this, they don’t have those opportunities.”
Pelan said many people leave the field house more able to participate in society and feeling empowered by their new knowledge. They’ll drop in again to help their peers or share their training with people on the street. “They’re excited about technology and excited about the implications for their life with it,” Pelan said.
Michael Edward Nardachioni, 65, a writer who was at the café Friday, said he first dropped in looking for help setting up his voice mail service after buying a new phone.
A raft of medical issues sent Nardachioni to hospital last month, during which his phone and personal journal went missing. But with access to newer technologies and the ability to blog and journal on his laptop, he’s learning how to upload his work to internet-based storage services rather than relying on his devices’ hard drives.
“They’re telling me to save it in ‘the cloud,’ whatever ‘the cloud’ is,” he said, with a chuckle. “I’m not really that tech savvy.”