Purpose Project: Providing Elders with Purpose

Published by alcarden on March 1, 2018March 1, 2018

In the Spring of 2017, our goal was to tackle social isolation in elder adults. We worked semester long to discover exactly how to tackle this problem and what was causing the problem for older generations. With mentorship and guidance from the Fung Fellowship, we followed iterative design and a product development outline to dig deeper into the issue and what elders really wanted as a solution. We found by speaking to many elders in our community that they craved a way to share their experiences and connect with the younger generation. As part of the younger generation, my team and I knew that many people our age would love to connect with elders. Purpose Project aims to set up these connections by providing meaningful opportunities that both younger and older generations are interested in pursing. We are currently in development and hope to partner with OLLI – Osher Life-Long Learning Institute to help facilitate connections between Berkeley students and elders. We placed third in the Fung Fellowship’s end of semester pitch event and received positive feedback with other potential partners and a stipend to continue our work this year! We are excited to see where this year will take us and how we can better develop a platform for elders to use.