Stratford Preparatory junior Nihar Bhatt’s passion for computer science took him far beyond a coding project. Now, rather than create the latest game, he uses his skills to teach technological literacy to Los Altos’ senior community.
“I wanted to volunteer in a way that relates to my major,” Bhatt said. “I’m going into computer science, and that’s my interest, so creating presentations for seniors about internet safety is an intersection of the two fields I wanted to explore.”
He began his project, called Senior Net, by reaching out to a senior center called Priya Living, inspired by friends who had previously performed music for the seniors there. The staff agreed to host a workshop that would focus on avoiding scams.
“The seniors shared their experiences,” Nihar said. “And I would have to say that maybe 100 or a bit less than 100 seniors had fallen for internet, email or phone call scams before.”
According to Nihar, his presentation gave an example of each type of scam, teaching seniors to distinguish between a fraudulent URL and a real one, a phishing email and a valid message, or a robocall and one from a family member.
“I was looking at the internet fraud report the FBI releases every year for the senior age group,” Bhatt said. “I saw that after the pandemic, the total money lost increases every year. Yet, I was still surprised by the number of people.”
Since then, Nihar has held workshops at the Los Altos and Mountain View senior centers, along with similar venues in nearby cities.
According to Nihar, the seniors at his workshop wanted more than just information on internet safety. They also asked questions about contacting relatives and accessing photos of family members.
“Seniors are getting scammed and it was helpful to get information on how to protect ourselves,” workshop attendee and Los Altos resident Sherri Kawazoye said. “But some of us kind of know how to text, but we really have limited knowledge on our phone.”
Thus, Nihar was prompted to create a variety of presentations, reaching out to more senior centers and retirement homes while leaning on his mom, Bhumika Tripathi, for support.
“When we started initially emailing, we weren’t always getting too many responses, so my mom would make a lot of phone calls and would also go in person often to ask the centers if we could do a workshop,” Bhatt said.
So far, Nihar has conducted over 50 workshops and, each time, helps around 20 seniors.
“I go to the workshops because these are my concerns,” Kawazoye said. “One of my best friends and my son-in-law’s dad have been caught in (scams). I was just grateful that there’s someone around that presents on this.”
Nihar’s next workshop will be held 3:30 p.m. Saturday (March 22) at Sunrise Senior Living in Cupertino.
Nihar is working on a website that was expected to be completed by this week.
For more information, visit seniorsnet.org.
