Raising Awareness about Ageism Erasmus Project

Project Title

Raising Awareness about Ageism

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Inclusion – equity; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

Phenomena such as non-discrimination and equality are issues that the European Union and its member states emphasize with sensitivity. Numerous publications, projects, artistic activities and policy recommendations based on combating ethnicity and gender inequality have been produced on these issues. However, ageism, which is at least as important as ethnic discrimination and gender-based discrimination, has always been kept in the background in combating discrimination. But the aging trends of the European Union countries reveal how important it is to think about issues related to combating ageism. In this context, “WISELIFE: Raising Awareness about Ageism” was implemented primarily with the idea of raising awareness and combating this type of discrimination against the elderly. Because aging is a phenomenon that every individual will one day probably experience, unlike being of a certain ethnicity or gender. Therefore, activities focusing on ageism and aging experience and measures to be taken for age discrimination will be beneficial not only for a certain group of people but for the well-being of humanity.

Apart from that, as COVID-19 cases continue to soar around the world, the physical and psycho-social health of our senior citizens warrants urgent attention, now more than ever before. Because these days, our elderly not only are at risk of losing their lives, but also suffer due to the prevalent stigma of ageism. In general, the elderly are marginalised even though traditionally humans are taught to respect and take care of the older generation, the innate fear of ‘ageing’, ‘losing vitality’ and death have made ‘ageism’ a prevalent ‘social evil’.

Accordingly, the project consortium consists of countries that have various concerns about ageism. In Turkey, The Continuous Education Center within Izmir University of Economics is the coordinator institution of this project. From Italy, an institute for elderly hospitalization (ISRAA) is included in the project. Similarly, BAGSO which is an umbrella organisation of institutions that work for older people has been determined as another partner institution from Germany. Other partner institutions are University of the Aegean in Greece, University of Szeged in Hungary, and University of Lodz in Poland which are all represented with their continuous education centers. It is thought that the countries in this consortium are the ones that experience the ageism problem and the aging population reality at different levels, which will provide an advantage in addressing these issues at a transnational level.

Five outputs are planned to be put forward within the project. The first output is planned to be a publication that contains descriptive and comparative analysis, country contexts and literature review on ageism. The second output is a training package for elderly which promotes active aging. Within this output, a mutually agreed training plan will be implemented and its results will be evaluated conducting a pre-test and post-test. The third output of the project is to shoot a documentary in which planning and implementation of the project will be reflected step by step. The fourth output of the project is to put forward a digital memory. The digital memory will be a platform that contains oral history studies, narratives on old photographs of objects and materials which connects the elderly to the past. The last output of the project is to provide a toolkit for elderly education for CECs in order to combat with exclusion of elderly from the social-sphere and to increase their happiness. This last output of the project will create a free toolkit for elderly education to be used by all CECs in European Countries.

To obtain these outputs, the methodological approaches which will be adopted are quantitative approach which contain surveys for descriptive and comparative analyses and qualitative approach which contains depth-interviews, oral history studies and photographic story technic to create a digital memory platform.

With all these outputs WISELIFE aims to raise awareness on ageism with the publication and the results of all the outputs, to decrease the exclusion of elderly from the social-sphere with the training package and digital memory outputs, to provide a road map for the institutions which are willing to work with older adults with the toolkit and the documentary and to promote active aging via enabling the elderly to benefit from educational opportunities.

With the implementation of this project, it is expected that both international awareness will be raised against ageism and the activities which will support active aging will be shared, reproduced and became widespread. Also, in the long-term the project is expected to contribute to the development of national policies and dialogue between EU countries on adult education and combating against ageism.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 186485 Eur

Project Coordinator

IZMIR EKONOMI UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• UNIWERSYTET LODZKI
• ISTITUTO PER SERVIZI DI RICOVERO E ASSISTENZA AGLI ANZIANI
• SZEGEDI TUDOMANYEGYETEM
• Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Senioren-Organisationen e.V.
• PANEPISTIMIO AIGAIOU
• BARTIN UNIVERSITESI