A mobile IT tuition service for the elderly is looking to go national by teaming up with retailers and dedicated tutors across the country.
A Helping Hand currently offers its services to wannabe silver surfers in London, Kent and Surrey, with another tutor lined up in Cambridgeshire.
After expanding across the South East, founder Rob Richman hopes to find more partners further afield.
“The idea would be the South East in the coming few months and then certainly national. It’s just finding the right people to do it,” he told PCR. “It’s not the ICT qualifications that are important. They’ve got to have patience and be able to explain computing in a way that people will understand.”
Having recently teamed up with PCR Award winners Geeks-on-Wheels to provide special offers to each other’s customers, Richman is keen to form similar partnerships with other service providers, as well as retailers. “I’d be very much open to working with retailers. If you take your average retailer, they don’t provide lessons for older people – if they knew there was a service out there I would have thought one of them would snap it up,” he said.
A Helping Hand, which is part funded by the Nominet Trust, has had around 60 clients over the age of 50 since it was established last year. Over the course of eight one-hour lessons, students are taught the basics of using a PC, including word processing and Skype.
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