Real-world drop-in closed, not suspended
Our last session was 2 March. The 9 March drop-in was suspended. Today (16 March) we felt that it was unsafe even for a podcast session with only six people in the room — so that had to be cancelled too.
We cannot tell you when we will be open again.
Online drop-in, online learning
The whole point and purpose of the drop-in project is real-world social inclusion — not the social distancing of the virtual world. But now we have to consider the really serious effects of COVID-19 social distancing.
So we are fast-forwarding existing plans to offer an online drop-in and online learning to older people who are isolated at home. That might be all of us soon.
Many of you already have the basic resource — a GSuite account. More than 100 people have email accounts at seniors.org.uk, bold.org.uk, szs.net or agewell.org.uk. Those are all GSuite accounts, and they all provide immediate access to an online meeting room app named Meet. We could add about 450 more, and it’s all free for us.
If you have a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop computer that is not too old — and an Internet connection at home, you should be able to use GSuite Meet. We expect that many of you will need help while you are using it, so we will recruit volunteers to join the sessions.
The online drop-ins will be group events, not conversations between 2 people — so you can expect to see familiar faces and hear familiar voices.
We still have many details to work out, and we still don’t know how we can include digital beginners and people with no Internet at home.
The 24/7 Online Drop-in
Everybody with one of the GSuite accounts has already received a link to the first experimental online drop-in. We are still testing it, so nothing much will happen for a few days. The information you need will be in your email and messages soon.