'Plan Be: Active Senior Volunteers' was a two year project between organizations (public and private) from Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and Finland, however the project was framed within a long-term perspective and planned with a view to achieve a multiplying effect and sustainable impact. The EU is made of its citizens and for its citizens! Encouraging and facilitating citizens' wider involvement in the European Union and what it stands for is of great importance. The main aim of this project was to create high quality learning opportunities, through the exchange of methodological approaches between the involved partners, creating a strategic and innovative program to engage senior citizens in lifelong learning. The focus was on the promotion of an active ageing program through active citizenship and involvement in volunteer work and community activities, addressing issues such as European citizenship, nature and environment, interculturality, social inclusion, among others.As 2015 was the European Year for Development, this project was a great opportunity to inspire more Europeans to get engaged and involved in development, stimulating a commitment to eradicate poverty, and demonstrating how senior volunteers can have a large contribute.The project “Plan Be: Active Senior Volunteers” aimed at fostering active ageing and lifelong learning, with the support of four clear components:1) fostering involvement in volunteer work and community activities as a key strategy for active ageing and european active citizenship; 2) developing and consolidating adult educators competences (knowledge, skills and attitude) in order to structure active ageing programme initiatives for senior citizens;3) contributing to a positive impact on local development in a sustainable way, considering senior citizens as key agents;4) contributing to the sense of belonging to Europe, as European Citizens, by creating a program with a transnational component.The following main activities were performed:- 5 transnational meetings (with elements from all the countries involved) which took place in the various countries involved, for project management and coordination;- Mapping and Survey phase (statistics, challenges, good practices);- Creation of the Plan Be Programme which included: Programme Design, Initial Staff Training (in Italy), Pilot Test with senior volunteers at local level (in all countries); Amendments and adjustments to the Programme; Blended Mobility of Senior Volunteers (In Slovenia);- 4 Multiplier Events (one in each of the countries involved) to disseminate the project and its results;- 1 Transnational Multiplier Event (Final Event) for dissemination of the project and its results (in Slovenia).The project had a good geographical balance, involving 4 countries from Southern, Northern and Central Europe, which contributed to ensure a real European outreach of the project.The project achieved sucessfully the objetives proposed, and recognizes the importance of promoting an open access to the project products. All materials are free downloadable in project website: http://planbeproject.com/

<< Background >>European societies are ageing. In 1950, only 12% of the European population was over age 65. Today the share has already doubled, and projections show that in 2050 over 36% of Europe’s population will be 65-plus years old. Promoting older citizens’ civic engagement and participation has emerged as key topic to society. Especially in a time where major disinformation campaigns are interfering with democratic processes, with 68% of Europeans admitting coming across to fake news at least once a week in a recent study done by the European Commission in 2018. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that people over 65 share seven times more fake news than young users do in social media. This situation especially got worse with the COVID-19 pandemic where the exposition, traffic, and using of internet to stay informed and share information increased drastically. The spread of both disinformation and misinformation can have a range of consequences, such as threatening our democracies, interfering with elections, polarizing debates, and putting the health, security, and environment of EU citizens at risk. As a major challenge for Europe, it requires a coordinated response of all agents in society and a strong focus on education in media literacy and engagement of all generations towards a mindful citizenship. “LINK” is a 2-years-project that aims to create a non-formal educational strategy for organizations and facilitators to be prepared to promote digital media literacy and a mindful participation of senior citizens in democratic life. It will gather five entities (public and private) from PT, PL, IT and ES with a large and complementary experience in adult education and active aging promotion across Europe, that are motivated in offering lifelong learning opportunities specially design to seniors to allow them to accompany the digital transformation, fight disinformation campaigns and fake news and encouraging them to participate actively in society.<< Objectives >>(1)To create a capacity-building programme to develop digital media literacy and a mindful democratic participation among senior citizens. (2)To empower facilitators and educators on how to promote an active and mindful citizenship among seniors. (3)To encourage the exchange of experience and methodology among partners, reinforcing the network, and increasing organizations’ capacity and educators’ competences.(4)To reflect on democracy pillars and seniors’ fundamental role as European Citizens towards democracy preservation, promoting their social and digital inclusion.(5)To create awareness on how disinformation and propaganda events interfere with democracy, promote critical thinking, media, and digital literacy.(6)To experiment and analyze different digital tools to promote the potential of European Citizenship as a mean to improve civic engagement and social inclusion among seniors.(7)To raise awareness among seniors to the importance of the common EU values, the principles of unity and diversity, reinforcing a sense of belonging to a common European space, creating connections, and providing sense of unity.(8)To provide an opportunity to participate in two transnational educational exchanges among seniors from different countries, reinforcing a European identity and Intercultural learning.<< Implementation >>To develop a non-formal educational strategy to promote digital media literacy and a mindful participation of senior citizens in democratic life, we count with three types of main activities: 1. Creation of an Observatory of Good Practices to promote senior active engagement in democratic life and media literacy across Europe.2. Development and validation of a capacity-building program to work these topics and skills with seniors that gathers: 2.1. One staff training mobility in Spain 2.2 Four Pilots in Portugal, Spain, Poland, and Italy that includes: - Local learning sessions with seniors - 1 Study Visit for senior learners and educators to the European Commission in Brussels - 1 Mobility of Senior Learners in Italy - Final Peer-to-Peer Learning Sessions - Validation/ Impact Analysis of the programme3. Four Multiplier Events – LINKing Fairs - in the four countries.During and after the project, the project team jointly and all partners individually will carry on communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities, establishing an effective quality and evaluation system for ensuring proper monitoring and evaluation of the project management and its results.<< Results >>LINK will empower adult educators and organizations, by creating, testing, and disseminating an innovative pedagogical strategy that addresses critical thinking, active engagement in society, mindful democracy, and promotion of the EU values in later life among senior citizens.We expect to improve the way adult educators and organizations (public and private) address digital media literacy and civic engagement among seniors and to create a strategy that can be replicated among Europe. Starting by impacting the five involved organizations, we want to test and to create guidelines that can be easily adapted to other contexts across EU as adult schools, senior residences and youth education.In parallel, we expect to change the way senior citizens perceive social media and democracy, developing important skills like critical thinking and promoting their mindful participation. We will contribute to their social and digital inclusion, making them aware and identified with the EU common values. Finally, we will contribute to the change needed of the perception of society towards aging and value the role of older citizens in our communities and in our EU as they are also the future of Europe.

“Our heritage: where the past meets the future.” The slogan of European Year of Cultural Heritage, combined with our community needs and our experiences, was the inspiring trigger for this project and led us to the idea of Bonding Generations and Cultures through Traditional Sport and Games. “Game On! Bonding Generations and Cultures” was a two-year Strategic Partnership for Exchange of Practices in Adult Education, and involved public and private organizations, from Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and Spain. The project was based on 4 premises: - Population ageing is one of the greatest social and economic challenges facing the EU and “Active Ageing” has become a policy priority within the European Union. Projections foresee a growing number and share of elderly persons (aged 65 years and over) Eurostat’s annual demography data collection shows there were 510.3 million people living in the EU-28 as of 1 January 2016, of whom almost 98 million were aged 65 years and over. - One of the headline targets of the EU 2020 Strategy for Education and Training is that at least 15% of adults should participate in lifelong learning. The challenge is to provide learning opportunities adults, throughout their life, especially disadvantaged groups, including senior citizens. - 2018 is the European Year of Cultural Heritage with the aim to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space. - Intergenerational dialogue refers to the way that people of all ages can learn together and from each other, and is an important part of Lifelong Learning, where the generations work together to gain skills, values and knowledge. Through the exchange of methodological approaches between the involved partners, we created a European Intergenerational and Intercultural learning opportunity, engaging senior citizens in active ageing and promotion of Europe’s cultural heritage, focusing on Traditional Sports and Games, tackling several challenges and needs from our communities. The project was framed within a long-term perspective and planned with a view to achieve a multiplying effect and sustainable impact, and it had a good geographical balance, involving 5 countries from South, Central and Eastern Europe, which contributed to ensure a real European outreach of the project.

"The project offered an intercultural space that on the one hand encouraged a critical reflection on the concept ofsocial enterprise and the different regulations and characteristics in the participating European countries;joint experimentation of non-formal education practices with reference to social enterprise. I'mn.84 youth workers were involved in the following training courses coordinated by the organizationspartners in Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal:The participants were involvedThe training experiences and activities proposed during the training courses were collected and presentedin the following common outputs:IO1: ""Analysis on social entrepreneurship"": an analysis of the concept of social enterprise and the different onesregulations, characteristics and good practices in the participating countries.IO2: The ""Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation"" booklet: containing the educational program, the modules and thenon-formal education activities experienced during the training courses,IO3: Open Learning portal ""Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation"": a learning platformon social enterprise and on non-formal education aimed at young people offering the possibility of accessinginteractive way to the educational program, the modules and the activities of non formal education.The outputs produced are a learning resource on the theme of non-formal educationto the social enterprise available to a wider audience of youth workers, educators, trainers,facilitators, social workers, intercultural mediators in their daily work with young people, inparticular in disadvantaged socio-cultural contexts. They have been developed on the basis of both a processcommon experimentation involving youth workers, experts and coordinators from the various countriesparticipants, both on the basis of pilot practices of non-formal education to the social enterprise developed astarting from the experiences 7 organizations involved and active in the youth field."

Failing to understand the global interconnectedness, the more complex cultural, social and political context in which we live, can lead to intercultural misunderstandings and conflicts, like the ones that we are currently living in the EU regarding the migration flow. We need to arm youth with the right concept of Intercultural dialogue as it is a tool to prevent conflicts and to engage in conflict transformation. Indeed, intercultural learning as a social and political aim promotes a world view in which people are actively engaged in processes that facilitate intercultural encounters, understand the potential of diversity, interact with which other as equals, question power relations and take action for a more just society.To empower youth, we need to empower youth workers and boost, first of all, Youth work that is known as a tool for personal development, social integration and the active citizenship of young people. This 2-year-project - “EXPLORE: Motivating Youth into Intercultural Dialogue” - aims to support the capacity building of youth workers and invest in the quality in youth work, by developing and sharing effective methods (storytelling, gamification, intercultural local encounters and creative communication) in reaching out to young people and work on intercultural competences in order to prevent intolerance among youth, engaging them in an intercultural dialogue mindset and strengthening knowledge and acceptance of diversity. For this we will gather different public and private institutions from 5 countries that have: (1) the same need to diversify methods to reach out to youth on intercultural dialogue, facing lack of motivation of youth to engage or even some misconceptions of youth workers regarding the topic (for example, oversimplification of intercultural learning); (2) different contexts and experiences on intercultural learning with youth; (3) different knowledge, tools regarding intercultural skills (ICC) training and approach to youth, worthy to share on a EU level; and (4) common will to improve the quality of youth work in each organisation, strengthening cross-cooperation and a multidisciplinary approach.Therefore, the objectives of the project are:- Invest in the capacity building of youth workers on intercultural competences and youth motivation promoting high-quality work and innovative methods of reaching out to Youth;- Learn, adapt and develop knowledge, competences and tools to work on diversity, intercultural learning and intercultural dialogue, using creative methodology like local intercultural encounters/immersion experiences, gamification, storytelling, among others;- Promote the exchange of good practices regarding ICC training and youth work among public/private partners from 5 countries, strengthening cross-cooperation; - Broaden the definition of culture, youth motivation and intercultural learning crossing approaches of public/private entities, addressing stereotypes and misunderstandings; - Strengthening the strategy of communication to the target-group, through exchange of good practices between public bodies, cooperatives and small-medium size organizations.- Contribute to the sense of belonging, as European Citizens and motivate participants to learn more about EU through transnational workforce and mobilities;We will create a journey of empowerment of youth workers on Intercultural Learning: (i) starting with exchange of good practices and methodologies on a transnational level using digital tools as Map Platforms; (ii) transnational training and creation of activities using Storytelling and Gamification methodology applied to intercultural learning; (iii) transnational training on Local Intercultural Encounters or Immersion Experiences (events, projects, etc.) and exploration of Creative Communication; (iv) finishing with a practical Booklet “Motivating Youth into Intercultural Dialogue”, disseminating the outcomes of the project.We expect that this project will make a contribution for the professional development and recognition of youth work and youth workers that will be aware of the complex perspectives on intercultural learning and contact, learn creative and practical methodology to better engage youth into intercultural dialogue and will learn how to better communicate with the next generation of change makers. Additionally, we will reinforce an international network that will continue to cooperate and create new initiatives.