Once upon a time... Oldnet
Every day, while he was at school, Gilberto Dimenstein would see the Golda Meir home for seniors across the street from his school in the Vila Mariana neighborhood. These images triggered feelings and ideas around the life histories of the seniors there. Gilberto imagined how the community could interact with these seniors for everybody's benefit. A sensitive observation and a latent idea that was to yield fruit in the future...

The years went by. In 1997, living in New York and now a journalist by profession, he was thinking about how Human Rights could be part of the school curriculum. It was then that he had the idea of Projeto Aprendiz, creating a website that supplemented and provided real time updates for the content of his book Aprendiz do Futuro (meaning “learner or apprentice of the future”) published by Ática in Brazil.

The content of the site was maintained by young people from public and private schools and coordinated by journalists. This was one of the first educommunication experiences in Brazil. In the wake of the site came more projects involving communication, art, education and involvement of young people.

In 1998, Projeto Aprendiz (Aprendiz Project) created the NGO Cidade Escola Aprendiz to obtain more effective dialogue with the community and further extend its activities. Art and computers became tools to improve self-expression and communication for young people, with the intention of developing educational experiments.

Since then, innovative educational work has been developed with children and young people, mobilizing the community to improve education.

But what about seniors? How could we articulate education for the future while involving the community without including seniors? In a culture that values high-speed information, technological innovation and fun, how could we convert fear of aging to joy in new discoveries and opportunities for a quality aging experience?

Revisiting his old dream fro his time as a school student, Gilberto Dimenstein decided to create a project connecting young people and seniors mediated by use of the computer, a great taboo in the lives of older people. Formulating this approach between seniors and young people - using the very same machine that on first sight seemed to distance them even more - was quite a challenge. All the more so if we add that the feelings of fear and even rage triggered in seniors by the difficulty of deciphering the enigmas of computers.

And that was how the Oldnet pilot program took off. In 1999, a computer laboratory was installed at the Golda Meir Home in front of the school where Dimenstein had been a student. The first group of young volunteers was set up in partnership with the Bialik school. The young people started to visit the seniors' institution weekly to teach the basics of computer use to anybody who was interested.

The weekly workshops had a positive impact on the lives of all those involved and gained prominence in the media. The program was replicated in several parts of São Paulo and took on new shapes as the methodology was strengthened.

The results of this educational experiment and the proposal to replicate it in other areas in Brazil and around the world have facilitated the continuity of this story that is now starting over with new entrepreneurs who are stimulated by the same or similar dreams as the young Dimenstein.