When Sarah Wishnia received an iPad from her daughter, “It was like Greek to me.” Max Rosenblum showed her how to socialize on Facebook and shop on Amazon with her new device.With Max's help, Elena learned to give orders to Siri, Mike familiarized himself with Waze and Honey began searching for information about movies, restaurants and books on her smartphone.Max is 16, a rising junior in Davie. His students are residents of Coral Gables, fascinated by technology and eager to learn about this brave new frontier. Max began offering his tech coaching for seniors a year ago, after he helped his grandmother with her iPhone and iPad. He taught her how to text and use Faccbook. He also downloaded a Scrabble app for her to play. “She loved it,”he said, not without a trace of pride.

That experience inspired him and his parents, Adam and Heather. They reached out to a connection at Coral Gables and launched a website, techmaxed. com. He also recruited(招募)other teens to teach the one-on-one lessons in Coral Gables. These youths go to the retirement communities at least once a month. Though teaching a class might appear to be more expedient,soon Max found out that group sessions simply didn't work.“People are at different levels,and it was hard to teach that way," he said. “It's much better to give them individual help.” “Most people come more than once,” he added. “I have my regulars.”

“First he showed me how to get my email on the phone,” Rosen, 88, said, “and then he wrote up a short step-by-step guide for me so I could remember.” Max admits that teaching older adults takes time, but he figures he's also paying it forward.

“Maybe when I'm 87 and there's new technology,”   he said, “somebody will teach me, too.”

When a group of college students put their sorrows into action, they never imagined the project would fuel a nationwide movement to help deal with hunger and control on food waste.

But that’s exactly what the Farmlink Project has done since 2020, bringing together hundreds of young volunteers to rescue nearly 77 million pounds of excess food and deliver it to those in need. The organization’s efforts help farmers, the environment, and people struggling to feed their families all at once.

“In the United States, 40 million Americans don’t have enough food to eat. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” said Aidan Reilly, who co-founded Farmlink. “Meanwhile, in the United States we’re throwing out over 100 billion pounds of food every year.”

Back in 2020, Reilly and his childhood friend James Kanoff were reading and watching news about food shortages, and they learned that area farms were forced to destroy excess produce that they couldn’t sell, especially with restaurants, schools and hotels closed. Reilly, Kanoff and a core group of friends worked together over Zoom, texted and e-mailed to contact farms coast to coast. “We didn’t really set out to start a nonprofit,” Reilly said. “We just thought, ‘There’re so many people suffering, if we can figure out one way to help, then that’ll be great.’”

In California, they found a farmer who had 13,000 eggs that could be donated, and Reilly offered to do the pickup and delivery himself. That was the first of many more deliveries. With “we’ll come to you,” as their catchphrase (标语), the group rented U-Haul trucks and attempted to do all the food pickup and deliveries themselves.

“We had a lot of hiccups in the beginning,” Reilly said. “We broke axles (车轴), loaded in 40,000 pounds of potatoes in a wrong way and had to try to drag them out by using another truck and a rope. But we made it work.”

“Farmlink has worked with more than 100 farms and 300 communities in the US, rescuing and moving enough food to distribute more than 64 million meals,” Reilly said.

Diane Yane always had a close relationship with her grandfather, so when he died in her twenties, the loss hit her hard. Shortly after that, Yane left her job to work with seniors. “I was hired as an activities director at a senior living center, and I took to it like a fish to water,” she recalls. “I started developing relationships with the seniors there. It was like having 200 new grandparents.”

Yane has been interacting with seniors ever since, from working at a care center to providing in-home care for private clients. Now, two decades later, she has opened a social club for adults who are 55 and older-Elder Pep Day Club & Spa(水疗中心), “I wanted to create a space for seniors interested in meeting other people, staying active and taking classes,” Yane says.

Members come in for different activities, including chair yoga, Spanish classes, indoor bowling, card and board games, creative writing, and more, and spa treatments or just to hang out. Later this year, Yane plans to open the second half of the space as a private spa.

In her years of professional experience with older adults, Yane has seen the extraordinary benefits of social interaction and human touch. According to a study by the American College of Health Care Administrators, touch is the most important of our senses, yet it is often overlooked. “Skin is the body’s largest organ and sends positive and negative signals to the brain. Touch deprivation, also known as touch starvation, leads to a range of emotional and physical problems,” it adds.

“I know how important it is for seniors to feel cared for-getting their hair and nails done and receiving massage therapy(按摩疗法),” Yane says, “but what’s really close to my heart is a private room with a walk-in bathtub. At assisted living facilities, many seniors only have access to a shower, where they sit on a bench and their caregiver sprays them with water. There’s not a lot of dignity or joy in that. I want to give seniors back the luxury of submerging(使浸没)their bodies in a warm bath.”