Seniors Perceive A Common Europe

<< Background >>The SPACE project idea was to strengthen the participation and inclusion of seniors aged 60+ in societal life by creating education opportunities and exchanges of experience that foster a stronger European identity. Despite the principle of lifelong learning, seniors often face fewer chances to engage in European initiatives like Erasmus+ compared to younger generations. This limits their ability to develop key competences and contribute actively to European society – a relevant fact to be considered in an ageing society. By addressing this gap through promoting lifelong learning and empowering older citizens to actively develop their key competences, in particular personal, social and learning to learn competences, the project activities aimed to build links between seniors in five countries across Europe - with the active involvement of senior learners as a crucial element to benefit from the expertise of peers from other countries. Focusing on life skills topics like nutrition, health, housekeeping, self-determined consumer behaviour and environmental behaviour offered a low-threshold access for everyone.<< Objectives >>In order to increase the lifelong learning opportunities for seniors in the five European countries Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, Sweden and Italy, the project consortium aimed at two target groups with following main objectives:Firstly, to equip adult education providers and trainers with a set of resources on how to develop a common European identity, key competences, sustainable thinking and awareness of cultural heritage in senior citizens by making use of their true-to life experiences and cultural heritage knowledge on nutrition, health, housekeeping, self-determined consumer behaviour and environmental behaviour. Secondly, to empower seniors through non-formal learning opportunities and European exchanges enabling them to gain more key competences and new insights as regards to European identity. Many of these skills are necessary for living together in a democratic and diverse Europe, such as social and intercultural skills, critical thinking and media skills. By improving skills and building relationships, the senior participants in the SPACE project contributed to strengthen the European cohesion.<< Implementation >>At the beginning of the SPACE journey, all partners analysed the LifeComp framework in relation to the topics nutrition, health, housekeeping, self-determined consumer behaviour and environmental behaviour. Moreover, they identified existing best practices and developed innovative implementation ideas. The research laid the groundwork for the development of the SPACE project outputs: Handbook with learning frameworks, Empowerment Course for seniors on five thematic areas, Digital Platform and Digital Trails. A series of empowerment sessions on each of the five topics was conducted in all countries for seniors, followed by a European Exchange bringing together the topic-related results from all countries, enabling a direct exchange among seniors for selecting exhibits for the digital trails.To disseminate information about the project and its results, three multiplier events were conducted by each partner organisation. The partners presented the SPACE outputs, enabled the participants to get familiar with SPACE and showed real-life examples of the local cultural heritage findings by seniors during the Empowerment Courses that were prepared for being presented on the Digital Platform<< Results >>The project produced the following outputs:Handbook for adult education trainers on Life Skills with best practice, implementation ideas and five learning frameworks in order to introduce them to the topic of life skills, the relevance of lifelong learning for seniors as well as European identity, cultural heritage and social cohesion.Empowerment Courses curricula and concepts with a series of supporting documents on five thematic areas for adult educators, tailor-made for being used in adult education with seniors in Europe.A Digital Platform on five thematic areas with local cultural heritage findings of seniors from Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Sweden and Italy, with four exhibits per topic and country. These 100 exhibits are presented attractively with photos, descriptions and supporting documents. Five thematic digital trails unifying a “best of” selection of exhibits – one per topic per country – with QR codes and short descriptions.Five regional trails for Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Sweden, Italy on the five thematic areas as a “best of” selection of exhibits per country.All above materials are available English, German, Bulgarian, Spanish, Swedish and Italian, the latter in English and national language each.