07 April 2012

After retiring, Rui de Oliveira, a Portuguese IT expert with forty years of experience in that field, felt “completely useless and lost”. To make it worse, memories of the Portuguese colonial war in which Rui had been obliged to serve as a soldier came back and he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

That was when a friend told him about the UNV Online Volunteering service, where Rui discovered countless opportunities for him to share his IT knowledge. “All of a sudden, my free time was filled and my life changed completely. I felt useful, just working on my computer via the Internet, building websites, advising people, providing ICT training, etc.”

“The invaluable experience and expertise of older people should be tapped into by companies, institutions, local and central governments, schools and universities, engaging them as consultants in diverse areas.”
-- Rui de Oliveira, UN Online Volunteer

After having been amongst the winners of the Online Volunteering award in 2010, Rui started advocating for online volunteering in Portugal. He was interviewed twice by the Portuguese television, shared his experience as online volunteer on various occasions and just recently a Portuguese university invited him to participate in a colloquium about active aging that will take place in May. Last year, Rui travelled for two months to Ghana to provide IT support to a Ghanaian NGO.

Rui spends between five and six hours a day volunteering online and says that “online volunteering was fundamental to maintain my mental health and quality of life.”