Age-friendly toolkit

Status: Ongoing

Multiple Italy

Print this page City population: 8100000000Practice started in 2023

Summary

While celebrating increased life expectancy, stakeholders in vocational education and training (VET) concur on the fact that the demands of longevity and demographic transition require cultivating novel professional roles and skill sets.

In response to these needs, the AGE-FRIENDLY TOOLKIT project has formulated a training curriculum for a ground-breaking role: the “Reference Professional for Inclusive Ageing in Age-Friendly Cities” and produced a collection of accessible educational resources (learning content and educational app).

These resources are meant to be integrated into vocational education and training systems while remaining freely accessible on the internet.

The learning material, available in English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and soon French, comprises 6 modules:
● M1. INTRODUCTION AND CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES (Ageing, Ageism, Age-friendly environment, Accessibility, Life-course approach, Person-centredness, …)
● M2. BUILT AND SMART ENVIRONMENTS
● M3. SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
● M4. SOCIAL INCLUSION AND COOPERATION
● M5. EMPLOYMENT AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
● M6. COMMUNITY SUPPORT AND COMMUNICATION

The multi-language training will be available also as a web app by the end of 2024.

The training content and methodologies were conceived and validated in iterated rounds of consultations with stakeholders in four European Countries (Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark).

Website: https://www.afctoolkit.eu/about/

Key facts

Main target group: Both younger and older people (i.e. intergenerational)

Other target group(s): Public authorities, universities (including third age universities), civil society organizations

Sector(s): Education

Desired outcome for older people:
Learn, grow and make decisions

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:

Ageism
Accessibility
Ageing in place
Dementia
Healthy behaviours (e.g. physical activity)
Intergenerational activities
Inclusion
Participation
Technologies
Other

Contact details

Name: Gheno, Ilenia

Email address: ilenia.gheno@age-platform.eu

Preferred language(s): English

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Older People’s Association

Others involved in the project:

Civil Society Organisation
Older People’s Association
Social or health care provider
Volunteers
Private sector

How collaboration worked: Collaboration has been great among all partners, each of them contributing their knowledge and experiences across the various steps of the training’s delivery. Led by CEOMA, the Spanish Confederation of Older People’s Association, the partnership encompassed other older people’s organizations (Anziani e Non Solo, Age Platform Europe), the private sector (AFEdemy) and public sector (SOSU) alongside with civil society organizations (Mensajeros de la Pax). The project has been co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme (GA: KA220-HED-1A62E2DB).

Older people’s involvement: Older people were involved in the age-friendly practice at multiple or all stages

Details on older people’s involvement: In the Age-friendly cities’ toolkit project, older people were: – Leader of the project (CEOMA) – Partners of the project (Anziani e Non Solo, AGE Platform Europe) – consulted along all stages of the project (definition, development, validation, implementation) – recipients and evaluators of training materials – testers for the web application – attendees in multiplier events and online/face-to-face consultations.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? No

Feedback:
Feedback were numerous and at all stages of the project. The most relevant ones pertained to the development of the training modules and encompassed cross-cutting issues, transversally relevant across all modules.

Expansion plans:
Yes, we’ll present the training toolkit to more public administrations and organizations to sustain the uptake of the trainings and sustain the implementation of age-friendly environments from the grassroots. We’ll moreover inform European policy-makers about the training and its impact in a dedicated event in Brussels, in October 2024.

Looking back

Reflections:
Considering the need for this training, we would have done this years ago!

Challenges:
The collaboration with public authorities is very time-consuming. We planned in advance and leveraged on our respective networks to mitigate this challenge.