TAFCity – ‘The Age Friendly City’

Name of good practice	TAFCity – ‘The Age Friendly City’
Name of organisation	EfVET
Website	https://www.efvet.org/
Email Address	efvet-office@efvet.org
City, Country	Brussels, Belgium
Sector	Elderly care

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Due to the increasing number of the older population, The World Health Organization (WHO) developed an initiative designed to promote the creation of age-friendly environments.

The Age Friendly City proposes to create an educative tool with the main aim of increasing the quality of life and recognise and respect older people, to ensure they remain fully integrated in society. In an age-friendly city, many aspects of life, policies and services take into account the requirements of an older population; these enhancements also assist younger people, families and people with disabilities.

The Age Friendly City project aims to transfer the results and experiences of two previous projects:

TACTALL, which developed a training program of accessibility for tourism businesses, and VICADIS, which provided technological support in the educational field using social networks for learning.

The proposal expects to join both of them to build this new educative tool in the cities that The World Health Organization (WHO) has established as ‘Age Friendly Cities’. Conveniently, the workers of tourist establishment, of hospitality and municipal services are trained to attend properly to this sector of the population.

The TAFCity project has brought together seven partner countries helping them to:

– Understand the meaning of active ageing, the needs of elderly people and the services available to them; how to improve the services and state how this may be achieved.

– Acquire the ability to interact with different groups of different ages.

WHY HAS IT BEEN SELECTED AS A BEST PRACTICE?

TAFCity project includes all the requirements to provide this sector of the population quality services that require. Based on a training for the ones who are going to take action on it, TAFCity aims to raise awareness and help cities and neighbourhoods to be more friendly with the elderly developing a training programme for delivery through social networks.

It is simply based on optimizing their quality of life, recognise and respect old people to assure that they are integrated on the society. As well, is a good step to improve other sectors of the society, looking for a quality life for all the generations and also, a way to create a framework for commitment which would lead to innovative solutions and long-term strategies for all.

The course that TAFCity has developed, the partners can update materials and tools. Besides, they have created a manual with the methodology for teaching the course, blended learning, e-learning and some models and techniques for adequate teaching based on competency learning. The groups attending the course said they learnt a lot about elderly people and how this project could change their lives.

We must not forget that everyone gets old, so we should show interest in making our neighbourhoods and cities a better and friendlier place for all people working in cooperation.