LOCAL: Boosting Silver Economy through local community mentoring

<< Background >>After the age of 50, the risk of long-term unemployment increases. Many older workers face difficulties when it comes to recruitment, access to training opportunities, job transitions and age-adapted tasks. Silver Economy along with Senior Entrepreneurship is seen as major opportunities to prolong working lives, reduce old-age unemployment, improve the social inclusion of older individuals. Silver Economy refers to all economic activities linked to older age groups. The concept is based on the notion that many older people continue to make valuable economic and societal contributions after retirement, and that older citizens can provide significant economic and societal benefits, particularly if they are healthy and active. The Silver Economy is an enabler to deploy age-friendly communities across Europe. Ageism and age discrimination is a challenge, which negatively affects older people and hinders their participation in society and in employment. Tapping into the potential of the Silver Economy requires changing the perception of population ageing, which also includes overcoming outdated stereotypes of older people.<< Objectives >>The project LOCAL, wanted to support the setting up and access to an upskilling pathway in the fields of Silver Economy and Community Mentoring, by creating a blended continuous professional development programme, with a competence matrix and learning materials to improve the competences of educators and other adult education staff in supporting 50+ adults, based in local and remote areas, to discover the potential of the Silver Economy as a drive to economic development in local and rural areas. Exclusion from training and negative perceptions of older people among employees were considered to be the main obstacles preventing people aged 50 years and over from working. This project was created from the perspective of improving the employability of older people, adult education and training. Skills training and education are central for promoting active ageing. In this sense, the LOCAL training programme, for both adult educators and 50+ adults, aims at overcoming various institutional barriers to lifelong learning that older people face. The main objective of the LOCAL project is to boost Silver Economy as an opportunity to local communities’ development by using community-based mentoring practices.<< Implementation >>To achieve it’s purpose, the LOCAL project implemented the following activities:1. Identification of 50+ adults to serve as inspirational role models by their mentoring and entrepreneurship skills; 2. Development and testing a blended in-service mentoring training programme to empower professionals working in adult education in supporting adults 50+ to develop entrepreneurial skills; 3. Development and testing a bespoke thematic mentoring cycle addressed at engaging 50+ adults in silver economy topics, digital and entrepreneurship transversal skills.<< Results >>The project included 3 main outputs/results:Result 1 - LOCAL Digital Hub for Community Mentoring: consisted in creating a virtual environment space designed as a skills bank, with a collection of role models in a digital storytelling format to map real-life stories of 50+ adults with outstanding lifepaths in mentoring and entrepreneurship to inspire others to become actively engaged in their local communities at different levels. This digital mentoring hub, as an OER platform, also incorporates curricula, materials, learning contents, mentoring toolkits and case studies that were developed during the project life-cycle.Result 2 - LOCAL In-Service Mentoring: a blended continuous professional development programme, that uses microlearning methodologies, aimed to upskill educators, trainers and staff working in adult education in mentoring skills. Result 3 - LOCAL Thematic Mentoring Cycles: designed to raise awareness, amongst 50+ adults, of entrepreneurship as a late-career option that can help counter ageism, prolong their working lives, reduce old-age unemployment, improve their social inclusion and enhance innovation through the development of start-ups within the Silver Economy ecosystem.