Project lead: Social or health care provider

• Local authorities
• Research institution

How collaboration worked: The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust (The trust) provided funding to support The Mong Kok Kai Fong Association Limited Chan Hing Social Services Centre (MKKFA) to implement the programme. An assessment panel consisting of The trust, the Institute of Active Ageing of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (IAA of PolyU) and the Yau Tsim Mong district council was formed to assess the proposal submitted by MKKFA. IAA of PolyU also provided professional support to MKKFA in the programme implementation process, including ambassador training to introduce the AFC concept and advice on programme evaluation.

Older people’s involvement: Older people helped to implement the age-friendly practice

Details on older people’s involvement: Trained as ambassadors, older people were empowered to introduce age-friendly city concepts and collect views from elderly centre members on the trial scheme “Smart Devices for Elderly Using Signalised Pedestrian” through talks, interactive games and voting.

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: Yes

Was the impact positive or negative:
Positive

Please share with us what you found in detail:
The programme yielded a positive impact on ambassadors and the older people attending the community education programme. Impact on both ambassadors and older people attending the community education programme: • The result of the questionnaire survey showed that most of them agreed or strongly agreed (<85%) that they were satisfied with the overall programme arrangement, had a better understanding about the Jockey Club Age-friendly City project and AFC's eight domains defined by WHO. They believed that their participation was important in promoting the age-friendly development in the community and were eager to continue participating in activities related to the development of AFC in the future. The majority perceived that the programme could enhance the age-friendliness within the social and civic participation and employment domains. Impact on ambassadors: • The result of the focus group showed that older people felt empowered by being actively involved in promoting age-friendly city messages and gathering older peoples’ views on age-friendliness issues. It contributed positively to the civic participation and employment domain as being an ambassador offered a volunteering opportunity for older people to make a contribution to the community. They had a higher sense of community belonging and believed that older people played an important role (e.g. voice out their opinions about community affair) in building an age-friendly community. • Most ambassadors also agreed that their level of social participation was enhanced as they were able to meet new friends and build up new social networks through participating in the programme.

Feedback:
Ambassadors appreciated that they were able to meet new friends and build up new social networks through participating in the programme. In the process, the mutual support among ambassadors facilitated mutual learning and growth. With better understanding of age-friendly city concepts, they were aware that older people are important community stakeholders and hearing their opinions was essential to building an age-friendly community.

Expansion plans:
To further empower older people to participate in community affairs, the district-based programme“Jockey Club Age-friendly City Project – Next Station: Yau Tsim Mong (1)” will be launched. This programme will focus on the transportation and social participation domains. After getting more familiar with AFC concepts, ambassadors will play an active role in conducting community field visits to identify and assess the age-friendliness of minibuses (e.g. availability and frequency of the minibus route). The information gathered from community field visits would be consolidated and presented to the members of elderly centres.

Reflections:
N/A

Challenges:
The major objective of this programme was to encourage older people and community stakeholders to express opinions in building an age-friendliness community. The major challenge was to facilitate the bottom-up participation of older people (as ambassadors) to promote and voice their opinions on age-friendly issues. In this programme, the ambassadors were recruited from nine centres for older people. Some ambassadors felt hesitatant at the beginning because they did not have much understanding of AFC concepts and never gave a presentation in front of an audience before. To address this challenge, training on AFC knowledge, MC and presentation skills were provided to equip ambassadors with relevant knowledge and skills. Mutual learning and encouragement among ambassadors also played an important role in enhancing their confidence. Another successful factor in addressing challenges was the participation and collaboration of the centres for older people in the Yau Tsim Mong district. The centres for older peoplen have been coordinating and mobilising older people to participate in community affairs since 2008. With the facilitation and encouragement of social workers, older people acknowledged that their voices played a crucial role in improving the age-friendliness of the community.