Chicago Sun-Times–Jerry Walters communicates daily via e-mail and with Facebook friends, is reconnecting with relatives and acquaintances and loves to watch online video of his favorite old-time gospel singers.

Walters is so hooked on the Web, he spends three hours a day doing searches, practicing his typing skills and sending messages to friends and family. The only difference between Walters and every other Web-addicted blogger, social gamer and coupon clicker is that he is 70 years old and first logged on to the Internet about six months ago.

“It’s amazing,” said Walters, a native of Kosciusko, Miss., made famous for being Oprah Winfrey’s hometown.

“One day I typed in the word ‘apples’ and I had no idea there were so many kinds of apples.”

Walters’ introduction to the virtual world at the Elois McCoy senior-living complex in the Lawndale neighborhood comes from President Obama’s stimulus program’s Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP).

BTOP awarded $4.7 million to Connected Living, a Quincy, Mass.-based firm dedicated to connecting seniors to computer technologies, to install the technology and hire “ambassadors” to implement the program in the Chicago area.

Connected Living’s program is operating at 10 private-pay and 23 affordable-housing buildings in Northern Illinois. The privately owned apartments include two in Chicago and eight in the suburbs run by Brookdale Senior Living, the nation’s largest owner and operator of senior-living communities. The public housing sites are run by housing authorities as well as by Chicago’s senior-living operators Bethel New Life, Blair Minton Associates, Habilitative Systems, Sankofa Safe Child Initiative and Senior Lifestyle Corp.

Public works money from Illinois Jobs Now financed the 18 percent grant match, at $1.2 million, and Connected Living and its partners are contributing an additional $925,000 in labor, services and materials to complete the project.

“We believe that seniors deserve a voice [through the Internet], especially because their impact on children and their communities is so significant,” said Sarah Hoit, CEO and co-founder of Connected Living and a former AmeriCorps deputy director for national service.

“We could put computers out on tables, but we have learned that we must bring engagement to the experience to really give seniors an interactive lifestyle.”

Read the full article on the Chicago Sun-Times website:

http://www.suntimes.com/business/4603176-417/stimulus-program-brings-internet-to-senior-citizens.html