Computer Pals for Seniors (Ku-ring-gai) Inc.

An Early History of Our Club: The First Computer Pals for Seniors Club

Late in 1990 Malcolm Beazley, a teacher at Turramurra High School, proposed that at new project, Computer Pals for Seniors, be launched during the 1991 Senior Citizens Week. Malcolm Beazley was the founder and international director of Computer Pals Across the World, a communications project linking schools internationally.

As a result, the first Computer Pals for Seniors group in Australia was launched in March 1991 at the Lindfield Senior Citizens Centre by the Mayor of Ku-ring-gai, Alderman Richard Lennon. The idea was to provide links across the generations with local senior citizens working with Turramurra High School students. These links were to extend via email to other high schools, colleges and senior citizens both round Australia and internationally.

Seniors commenced learning email on an old computer lent by Ku-ring-gai Council and located at the Lindfield Seniors Centre. When the first email trainer became ill, Joan Goodwin and Elaine Dabbs spent many hours mastering the email process and training on a computer that was replaced a short time later by a wonderful donation from the Lions Club of Ku-ring-gai. Often we attempted to teach computing to seniors who did not have a computer at home.

In June 1991 Ku-ring-gai Computer Pals were invited to present a paper to the International Conference of Computer Pals Across the World in Germany, detailing who we were, our progress to date and our aims and objectives. Joan Goodwin and Elaine Dabbs did the presentation online to the Conference via the computer at Lindfield, answering questions sent online from people attending. Our replies were promptly sent back and projected on to a large screen in front of the audience. It was exciting. This generated interest from Sydney newspapers and drew emails from other parts of Australia from around the world - from Iceland, the Shetland Islands, Europe, the US and Canada.

We were able to encourage and assist other senior groups in Sydney to form clubs. Willoughby and Eastern Suburbs both closed after a short time. Hunters Hill started in March 1992 and Frenchs Forest in March 1993 and both continue to operate successfully. Many other groups in NSW and around Australia have since been launched successfully.