The Age-friendly Environments Mentoring Programme (MENTOR-AFE) is a training programme established to develop skills to lead, influence and implement age-friendly cities and communities. It is being introduced to further strengthen the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities (the Global Network), and to foster leadership development in people striving to make their communities more responsive to people of all ages.

Currently, MENTOR-AFE takes the form of the Age-friendly Environments ECHO Programme (AFE-ECHO): a multi-session learning cycle guided by the needs of emerging age-friendly leaders and aligned to approaches and guidance from WHO on age-friendly cities and communities.

MENTOR-AFE is a programme of the World Health Organization (WHO) delivered with support from the International Federation on Aging (IFA).

There are a wide range of skills important to developing age-friendly environments including, but not limited to the following:

• advocating for age-friendly environments and/or the inclusion of older people;
• building strategic partnerships;
• facilitating participatory processes;
• addressing inequalities;
• conducting a baseline assessment;
• developing an action plan;
• evidence-based programme design;
• implementing and managing an age-friendly project or programme of work;
• monitoring and evaluation;
• analysing and developing policies;
• imparting knowledge and skills to others;
• managing and coordinating teams;
• fundraising;
• developing and implementing campaigns; and
• communicating and promoting project activities.

The programme is open to individuals from communities that are members of the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities and as well as government and non-government representatives from low and middle-income countries. MENTOR-AFE is especially targeted at people in leadership positions and positions of influence within cities and communities. This is in order to focus on those who can gain significantly from mentoring and whose actions can have a significant impact within their communities.

Each AFE-ECHO learning cycle uses one primary language, with cycles regularly planned in English, French, and Spanish. To stay updated on current opportunities, keep checking back on the MENTOR-AFE page or sign-up to our newsletter.

The latest MENTOR-AFE opportunities, including AFE-ECHO learning programmes, are listed here.

For AFE-ECHO, registrations are done via Zoom. Registration can be done at any time and do not close until the last session of each learning cycle is complete. However, as each session builds on each other we strongly encourage participants register before the first session begins, and complete the full set of five sessions across one cycle.

There are no costs to join this programme.

For AFE-ECHO, as it is a virtual training programme there may be some costs for telecommunications (e.g. internet access), which you’ll need to cover.