“Mom, send that folder on the desktop with the name ‘Office Project’ to my office email urgently. Or my boss will throw me out.”
“But how do I switch on the PC”
And I gave up on trying explaining to her on how to attach the file to an email and send it to me. I had just shown her all this last night and she forgot it the next day. When I returned home in the evening, I burst out my entire office anger on her and skipped dinner.
That’s when my best friend Parth called me up and vented out my anger on him as well.
But I don’t know if you call it a sheer co-incidence, he had gone through something similar last week. The entire episode did not let me sleep peacefully that night (obviously I was hungry as well).
Later that week, I went for a seminar with the thought still following me.
“Sell what society needs!” urged the speaker at the seminar where I had my eureka moment.
“Despite the world being online and technology driven, our parents were not comfortable even switching on a PC”.
Conceived by Parth and me, eParent is a “gift to our parents”.
This is the story of Parvez Jesani and Parth Parikh who started eParent around a year back.
eParent is a customized computer literacy programme for housewives, middle aged and senior citizen. We send trained instructors, including female instructors for women clients, to their homes. We are very flexible with ehe medium of instruction, timings and individual learning plans which acts as a major differntiator. By imparting the basics of computers “from scratch” – switching on the PC, using the keyboard and mouse – and Internet- related utilities such as Google, email, Facebook and YouTube, we do not want eLiteracy to be barrier any further.
Old age or stay-at-home-mother loneliness loses some of its sting when social networking brings people closer to family and friends.
Our intent is to develop a model to impart much-needed computer literacy to housewives, senior citizens, etc., as well as generate employment for students, housewives and the needy, thereby helping both sections to become independent.
Piloted in June 2013, eParent has covered over 100 batches across Mumbai so far, training over 150 housewives and senior citizens while providing part-time employment to 15-20 teachers. And the journey has just began.
We are not doing this as a prime time venture to earn our bread and butter but just a social giveback. Your feedback would be highly appreciated to help us get the ball rolling.
You could connect with me @simply_hardik or read some of my posts at www.simplysoch.wordpress.com
P.s: I have joined eParent recently. And I am loving it 😉