WINTER CONNECT
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Team 1-Q Proposed Solution → WINTER CONNECT: Activities and Mobility Solutions for improving isolation for elderly community in St. John’s, Canada
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<aside> ℹ️ Thurayya Ravelo, Ester Maio, Debasish Basistha
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Every winter, elderly residents in St. John's, Newfoundland are physically cut off from their community for four to five months. The city clears only 175 km of its estimated 420 km of sidewalks — and residential streets, where seniors live, are explicitly excluded. A freeze-thaw climate cycle converts cleared snow into sheet ice within hours on streets already too steep for safe winter walking. St. John's has the oldest population of any Canadian province, with over 25% of residents aged 65 and above.
When elderly residents cannot leave home safely, social connection collapses. leading to physical and mental health deterioration. Each serious fall costs the healthcare system up to $47,000.
This is the problem WinterConnect is designed to solve.
WinterConnect is a single-neighbourhood pilot running across one winter season within a 1–2 mile radius of St. John’s city centre, targeting 50–100 elderly residents aged 65 and above. It has two components.
First, a WhatsApp-based community group — supported by a part-time coordinator and a physical hub at a local church for non-digital users — running two structured activities per week: book club, cooking class, movie afternoon, knitting, and smartphone literacy sessions. Entry is through trusted referrals from GPs, pharmacists, and churches, not self-enrolment online.
Second, a single first-to-last mile corridor connecting the pilot neighbourhood to the nearest GP clinic, pharmacy, and Metrobus stop. Snow Angel volunteers clear it within three hours of snowfall.
Weatherproof signs guide residents along the lowest-gradient route. Curb ramps on the corridor are retrofitted with passive drainage — the number one winter fall point for elderly pedestrians.
We have not conducted fieldwork in St. John’s. All population, route, and context data is derived from Statistics Canada, published MUN research, CBC reporting, and the Challenge Brief stakeholder interviews. A pilot coordinator’s first task must be to validate our assumptions on the ground.
Three specific uncertainties require early resolution. First, the ratio of digital to non-digital participants is unknown until registration — our physical hub addresses this but the balance matters for resource allocation.
Second, Eastern Health fall data at ramp-level resolution requires a formal data-sharing agreement not yet initiated; community-reported incidents via WhatsApp serve as the Year 1 proxy if unavailable.