Senior Social EntrepreneuringBuilding capacity among seniors to serve as social change brokers in communities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Senior Social EntrepreneuringBuilding capacity among seniors to serve as social change brokers in communities

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

The context
The Senior Social Entrepreneuring project works one of the most important social and educational challenges in 21st century Europe – re-activating the overwhelming social and educational potential of the increasing number of experienced seniors in society to help them build capacity to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.
There is a growing population of healthy older people with the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity through extending their working lives, including through entrepreneurship and volunteer work, which is proven to give a positive impact on a person’s mental health. Therefore, we wanted to use the project as a platform to encourage older people to be active citizens and create social innovation as an alternative to traditional public service and furthermore becoming mentors for other potential entrepreneurs, both youth and seniors.

The project objectives were to mobilize teams of seniors in participating active in the communities and beyond to build capacity among them to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.
The project succeeded with bringing the policy needs in a strong, systematic and sustainable, yet practical and realistic way. We mobilized groups of seniors and build-up their capacity to act as ´Social Change Brokers´ in EU communities. They identified social needs and facilitated the change process towards a concrete social solution to the problem/need identified. In the capacity building process, they learned how to be a catalyst of social change by bringing in relevant stakeholders across sectors, implementing their initiative and to make their initiative sustainable.

Number and profile of participating organizations
The consortium brought together 8 partners from 6 EU countries: ´practice partners´, ´knowledge partner´ and an experienced ´quality assurance partner´. The coordinating partner was the department of Health Care in Aarhus Municipality (Denmark), while the primary target group in this department is citizens older above 65 years. The knowledge partner was INRCA, a public national organization in Ancona with the main aim of contributing to a holistic understanding of the ageing process from a demographic, social, economic and political perspective. The quality assurance partner was Working with Europe (non-governmental), who has a lot of experience regarding EU projects by helping partner organizations create innovative ideas and support the quality of the work processes and outcomes.
The rest of the partners acted as practice partners; 3 non-governmental organizations, one university in England and one public corporation in Barcelona dealing with general interests of commerce, industry and services.

Description of undertaken main activities
The activities such as project meetings and outputs have contributed to let the partners and participants be aware of what is happening around the six local communities in the project. At the capacity-building seminars a network of European seniors were established. They have learned to act as senior social change brokers and to bring social innovation in the local community. In the end, each local community group arranged a multiplier event, where they promoted their initiatives and told the citizens in their local community about the role as a senior entrepreneur and the impact of the project.

Results and impact attained
The Erasmus+ project SSE has been an important stepping stone towards understanding the importance of seniors’ active role in the local community.
The impact of the project has been very positive as the seniors took the stage and they were the main stakeholders of this project and drove the activities. In our opinion the project has been a success, which is visible by the ongoing activities and the sustainability in most of the 16 initiatives.
The project creates or promotes social change in different scales and with different stakes, which helps not only the senior to feel useful, but also to be useful to others, whether it is by playing music for the local communities’ elderly or by supporting and mentoring asylum seekers to include them in the community.

The plan is not only to make the 16 initiatives sustainable, but also to implement the meaning of a senior social entrepreneur into the local communities, thereby securing the meaning of a senior social change broker and how to act upon this.
Our participating seniors expressed their interest in a future European project, where their new senior-driven social innovation practice can be put into further use by focusing on isolation and loneliness in both rural and urban areas.
It’s worth mentioning that our French partner Pistes Solidaires applied for a KA2 Adult Education project, ARTEM, this spring at the French agency and the project was granted. Their initiative began in the Senior Social Entrepreneuring programme and now it is made sustainable by their new project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 198783 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARHUS KOMMUNE & Country: DK

Project Partners

• E-SENIORS: INITIATION DES SENIORS AUX NTIC ASSOCIATION
• Working with Europe/Treballant amb Europa Associació
• PISTES SOLIDAIRES
• UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER
• ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI RIPOSO E CURA PER ANZIANI INRCA
• Association Generations
• CAMBRA OFICIAL DE COMERC INDUSTRIAI SERVEIS DE SABADELL