Home for 50 Elderly People in Argentina

Last Thursday some elderlies from Hogar San José went to Flores to take part at the socio-affective worshop. In this program all are sitting together in a circle and have the possibility to compare their opinions and ideas about different social-affective subjects. The subjects were presented by the leader of the course or other persons.

For example, this day two volunteers de Mensajeros de La Paz from Spain presented the Spain book “La Experiencia de Envejecer”. It deals with some elderlies who report their personal ways about how they are interacting with inevitable challenges during getting older. To explain them how the project is like the volunteers showed the course participants a short spot of “La Experiencia de Envejecer” and some interviews from famous persons who are being a part of this project. During and after the presentation the elderlies had the possibility to ask and comment something to the topic.

As a conclusion of the course the leader asked the participants what their factors and motives of quality of life are and how they want live the last years of their lives. So the elderlies could compare their opinion with the others or just listen to them. For elderly people it`s an important and current topic. Therefore, the “socio-affective workshop” is helpful for them because so they have the possibility to get intellectuals approaches like this and talk about them.

Also it is very important for them to share time with people different from the one they live with at Hogar San Jose. A very solid interaction was generated, which will allow to continue carrying out joint activities. 

Once a week we meet up with the elderly people of the Day Care Center to give them an English class. We work in small groups of around four students and try to teach them basic things such as introducing themselves, counting and talking about the weather. We usually start off with revising the content of the previous lesson, then bring an input with new information and to finish the class we play a game to have them practice what they learnt and to make them speak. Furthermore we often end up with cultural discussions by comparing the European culture to the Argentinean one.

As you may imagine improving language skills at this age takes a lot of effort and sometimes it’s hard for them to remember the vocabulary. That’s why we can`t have a high expectation of their improvement but to us it’s already a great success to see them concentrated thinking of language.  Moreover to have them sit together, provide their social interaction and to create a more interesting daily life.

For some of them it’s been a lifelong ambition to learn English and with our class we try to fulfill their wish.
And also for us it’s a joy to see them studying very motivated and with a huge curiosity. As soon as we enter the Center they start greeting us in English and asking about when the class begins. Their ambition and seeing their pleasure of learning is a great experience and satisfaction for us as well.