Counteracting AGEism for a Europe open to all

"<< Background >>In today’s society, there is divide between generations, created by the systems and the way we organise the structures and services: education is separated by age years; social services are differentiated by age years; even social and cultural activities seem to be distancing people from one another. In addition, there seems to be a prevalence of ageism across all ages, regardless of being a younger or older person, though older adults face it more often or more intensely. The Global Report on Ageism, launched in 2021 by WHO, as well as many other statistics and reports on age discrimination and stereotypes, provide the landscape of the situation by showcasing the need to change the way communities are organised and the way activities are implemented, providing guidance into implementing education and intergenerational activities. From the grassroot level, some partners have come to identify in their local activities that the scenario picture at global level is happening, and even individual citizens share concerns about social isolation, lack of connectedness and increase of factions that segregate people by age. This poses constraints on how people grow and live. Besides the absence of different perspectives and the look from a<< Objectives >>The project “PAGES” aimed to support the global combat on ageism and to foster intergenerational cohesion at community level, by upskilling adult educators/ community workers on how to engage older adults in learning. It planned the co-creation of an Intergenerational programme, using creativity and culture. By implementing the PAGES project, partners wanted to:1. Promote awareness around the importance to talk and counteract ageism in society - creating a campaign on social media with materials that can be replicated;2.Upskill adult educators on how they can engage older adults in lifelong learning activities in the community, by involving them in an action-learning programme - developing a training course;3. Combat interpersonal and self-directed ageism by intergenerational non-formal education activities, targeting young and old people - with the design and conception of an intergenerational programme using arts and culture;4. Strengthen the European collaboration between partner organisations in the field of ageing, by endorsing the global campaign to fight ageism - besides the joint collaboration, partners aimed to increase their cooperation with a learning, teaching and teaching and training activity together.<< Implementation >>The Pages project consisted of three major groups of activities, including several activities.For PR1 - ""EngAGing Older Adults in Learning: a continuous professional development pathway for adult educators"" - partners did:A1 - Easi created the guidelines for the awareness campaign. All partners followed the guidelines and contributed to preparing and launching a campaign on awareness for interpersonal and self-directed ageism. The campaign took place during the months of October and November 2022 on social media (Instagram and Facebook), as well as on the initiative's website.A2 - Created the learning pathway for adult educators based on the WHO toolkit, setting up the outcomes, duration and topics. For this learning needs diagnosis of adult educators, ACEEU prepared a set of guidelines comprising the methodology for the need assessment that partners followed. The first part was a literature review and collection of good practices/ case studies on intergenerational practices. The second part was a focus group in each country. ACEEU produced a final report aggregating all the results and conclusions of the collection carried out by the partners. A3 - Based on the resulting report from the previous activity, K-GEM and EASI set << Results >>We developed three concrete outputs presented as key deliverables: (1) a training handbook and video learning package to equip adult educators with skills to engage older adults in lifelong learning; (2) the InterAGES framework programme to support intergenerational activities through arts and culture; and (3) the PAGES service model, which provides a roadmap of all project outputs and replication strategies. PR1 also included a collection of 21 inspiring practices and field research via focus groups with 35 adult educators, resulting in a summary report available online. The training pilot reached 67 adult educators in 6 countries, with highly positive feedback. A joint LTTA in Austria brought together 29 adult educators from partner organisations to co-create the InterAGES programme. PR2 began with consultations involving 165 young and older participants to map needs and preferences. Its pilot phase engaged 363 people. PR3 involved 7 experts for output validation and multiplier events reaching 227 participants, including a successful web conference with renowned speakers such as Dr. Vânia de la Fuente (WHO) and Judith Ish-Horowicz, alongside major European stakeholders like the FRA and AGE Platform."