Lake Orion High School student Matt Zitzmann was visiting his grandmother at a senior assisted living facility in Fraser when he came up with an idea that has changed the lives of area senior citizens forever.
Zitzmann, a senior, recently implemented a service learning project where he restores and rebuilds old computers for use in nursing homes. He gives some to the nursing home administration and some to the senior residents, and is teaching classes every week to help the residents learn to use the computers and the Internet.
“It’s something I wanted to do for about a year now,” he explained. “When I was visiting my grandmother, I saw they had a computer room…I thought it would be cool to start something like that.”
Zitzmann, who keeps a busy schedule as a member of the winning LOHS Robotics Team and the varsity golf team, contacted people from the Lake Orion School District in the spring to see if they could help him get computers for his project.
“I have to thank the school district for their support,” he said. “They donated almost everything. Some of the computers are in OK condition, but 75 percent of them need to be cleaned.
“I have to replace the CD Rom drives, anything in the computer…I try to find machines with the most potential,” he said.
Zitzmann receives funds for the project from the two nursing homes he currently works with, Grove Crest Supportive Care in Pontiac and American House in Rochester. Zitzmann will soon be adding a third nursing home, American House of Pontiac, to his list.
“It was a cold call thing,” he said. “They didn’t have to think twice.”
Zitzmann took a class at Oakland University over the summer and got some of his classmates there interested in the project.
“I’m going to get Troy High School into it too,” he said. “I’ll teach them a little bit.”
Zitzmann tries to go slowly with the instruction he provides on the computers at the nursing homes.
“We spend about 45 minutes to an hour every week,” he said. “I teach them to turn it on and off, to use the mouse…we build up to playing Solitare, and working in (Microsoft) Word. My hope is to get them on the Internet.
“I’ve already gotten more out of it than I thought I would, or what I put into it,” he said.
Zitzmann is still accepting donations of old computers for the project. He can be reached at 391-1032.