I was at our Harlem Health Promotion Center's Community Advisory Board meeting last evening. Was there to walk the board members through our site and lead through though a hands on session including signing up and posting a blog post.

What an experience and an eye opener both in terms of seeing some of the challenges in learning new technologies. But what was specially encouraging was the willingness of the participants to understand how to use the Site and to Reach out to the Community with their thoughts and suggestions about health and wellness.

In fact the four community members were thrilled and amazed that the technological features of the site made it so easy to share their thoughts. And these members included a 95yr old physician who blogged about how stretching has kept her so fit , agile and sharp despite her age. I for one, couldnt believe she was 95. 

95 yrs old Dr. P (as she is known) Learning How to Blog

Then we had the user shabam, who is in his lower 80s, but fairly quick with his typing and his fascination to learn more about technology (he wanted to know about netbooks). Besides posting a short post on Golf Tips,  he even completed a few fields of his profile. 

 Shabam Blogging about Golf Tips

And then we have Goldie who was visibly enamored that it was possible for her to invite friends or email articles she thought were interesting to others. Even the chairman of the board had a good time typing a short blog about the meeting and inviting some of his friends to read the same. 

Yes, there were challenges.  Both in the current site design (fonts size, some CSS errors) and in the General Issues with understanding how the medium works. But there was no lack of excitement of the possibilities that a community-driven site like ours can have. There were certainly no dearth of wisdom the community members have from decades of living a healthy life that would be so useful for the rest of the community to know about. 

The enthusiastic response and the feeling of participation that the members felt and expressed are some of the important reasons why we decided to build GetHealthyHarlem.org the way it is - open for participation by 'the community, for the communit' so as to best capture the knoweldge and collective wisdom 'of the community' 

As Dr. Bill, Chairman of the Board said, 'There is no turning back now.' And we certainly hope that we only grow from strength to strength from here.