To date, one of the most serious social problems is loneliness. Young people spend their time in social networks, avoiding live communication. And what are older people supposed to do? They don’t have the Internet access, and their children work seven days a week. In fact, they are lonely and have no one to talk to even about the wonderful weather outside …

The Republican Volunteer Center and the Joint develop a direction called “Let’s have a talk”. They launch a large and very important social project – the “Call Center”, which solves the problems of loneliness. As a rule, older people do not have enough attention. They need someone who is ready to just listen to and to keep up the conversation. They want to discuss television programs, the cultural news of the capital and the world, to exchange interesting stories.

But before the start of the project, volunteers need to be trained in order to gain all the necessary working skills and tools. Thus, the work on the Call Center project was started with a three-day seminar. The colleagues from the Joint Israel and Ukraine (Batia Wieg is head of the Aleh volunteer center in Rehovot, Israel, head of the social service in the charity fund, is engaged in the promotion of social services, Lora Esterelis is the patronage service supervisor of the Aleh public organization, Oksana Bozhenko is coordinator of social programs at JDC FSU), who have experience in the development and coordination of such projects, shared their knowledge and experience to help realize this idea in Chisinau.

It is worth noting that the formed group has consisted of middle-aged and elderly volunteers who have participated in various trainings and simulation games for 3 days. They have actively discussed various life situations and have also talked about different psychotypes of people.

The first step was to get to know your inner world, your destiny and values. This is important in order to accept and to understand the character of the interlocutor, considering the inner pain of the person.  It is essential to brighten up his/her daily routine by ordinary telephone conversation. The seminar has included such topics as a sense of responsibility, stereotypes about old age, the needs of older people, their life values. Volunteers have learned to hear and to listen each other during the interactive lessons. They have also learned to use a very important tool – their voice. All these skills will help to establish friendly relations with a person on the other end of the line for whom the phone call will be a real event, which he will look forward to.

Everyone is able to make this world a little bit better. Sometimes it’s enough just to pick up the phone and say: “Hello! How are you? We haven’t talked for a long time!”

Join us now! We are waiting for all those who care about the socialization of the elderly at the Republican Volunteer Center.

For additional information on the Call Center project, please, contact the coordinator of the Republican Volunteer Center: Olga Korzhenkova, 060184358 or 022-509-643.

До встречи в РВЦ!