25 January 2017 - By:

Website for planning walks

In our research we have concluded that walking with senior people is a good way to improve their sense of safety. A walk in the neighbourhood where these people live is healthy and brings a connection to the surroundings. The problem is that this is difficult for some seniors because they don’t have connections with other people that are willing to take that walk with them. A sustainable solution for this problem is building a website that delivers a platform for volunteers and seniors to come into contact and plan walks.

EenblokkieOm.com

We build an example website on the domain eenblokkieom.com. This website gives an impression of the platform we have in mind. Seniors, volunteers and elderly housing organisations can register. The registered volunteers can find seniors and the other way around. In an approachable manner, people can get into contact with a chat message functionality and plan walks in an online agenda.

Elderly

Everyone will be able to create an account and find volunteers in their area. If some elderly are not capable of doing this, their account can be managed by friends or family or their housing organisation. They can send requests to their matches volunteers to walk on suggested dates and times. This way they will get the opportunities to go outside more and come into contact with new people.

Volunteers

Lots of people are willing to do something in their free time to help their community but find it difficult to find opportunities to do so. This platform offers an easy way to do something for eldery people in their neightbourhood.

Elderly housing organisations

The housing organisations may have difficulty finding volunteers to participate in activities for the elderly. By offering them the opportunity to link their inhabitants to their administrative account and individually approving volunteers, they can offer more for their people.

Ideas

This platform could be promoted and grow by sending flyers to people and public places. It is possible to build an app beside the website for mobile device users to approach a larger public. The platform could implement some social media features or link to social media. An addition could be a profile page and the ability to do instant messaging. It could be a good idea to use google maps for offering an easier way to find people in the same neightbourhood and planning walking routes.