In 2019, the Municipality of The Hague was actively involved in the Erasmus+ AFE Activists project (www.afe-activists.eu). This Erasmus+ project aims to train older adults to advocate age-friendly environments in their own community. To achieve this goal, the project developed an advocacy training curriculum and organized a study visit to age-friendly city The Hague (October 7th-11th 2019).

The municipality hosted the study visit of 11 older adults from Lithuania, Germany, Austria and Italy to The Hague. The group visited several locations in The Hague, such as the iZi demonstration house (see pictures), community centres, library and SportCampus. Also they followed lectures and presentations from the municipality and The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Urban Ageing.

Besides the study tour, the municipality of The Hague was the decor of the training of a group of 10 older people in local neighbourhood Transvaal in the frame of the AFE-Activists project. The training was provided by project partner AFEdemy BV. The learners actively worked on the concept of age-friendly environments, methods of advocacy, identifying local neighbourhood needs and creating an action plan. The plan is to broaden the group of participants and to install a neighbourhood older adults’ council. The council can be consulted by the municipality and other parties to better formulate local policies.