Aim of the proposed project is to increase the social inclusion and decrease of loneliness among the most vulnerable group of elderly: those with low (digital) literacy levels. This will be done by the development of an innovative story-telling based e-training, facilitating volunteers and caregivers in valuable conversations. Development takes place in close collaboration with the target groups. The three-year project will be executed by a transnational consortium of five partners, from four different countries (NL, LU, UK, AU). The partner organisations are representatives of (lonely) elderly people, a design partner with expertise in co-design and a technical partner with experience in technical solutions for the older population. Loneliness is a serious problem among the elderly in Europe. In the Netherlands, there are over 4.1 billion people aged 55+. Out of these, 200,000 feel extremely lonely: they have social contact only once a month. In the United Kingdom, 1.2 million older people indicate chronic feelings of loneliness. Chronic feelings of loneliness can bring people down into a spiral of social exclusion. Older people with a lower literacy level are especially at risk of social exclusion as participation in current knowledge based societies are very much based on the ability to read and write. Storytelling can help them to make sense of their lives and connect them with their social environment. We use stories constantly; to inform, to connect with others or to share our feelings. Stories are used to organize our thoughts, find meaning and purpose and establish a sense of identity in this world. This is also why some people keep a journal organising their thoughts by writing them down on a regular basis. The proposed project aims to use these principles of storytelling in the development of a training against loneliness. Digital developments provide new opportunities in sharing personal narratives. However, many elderly people feel hesitant using them. They are for instance anxious to retain their privacy and distinguish between what they want to share with family, close friends or acquaintances. This is particularly true for those with a low literacy level. This is a pity as these digital tools may help to arrange, capture and use stories. Taking into account the needs of older people with low (digital) literacy levels and those working with them, our project aims to develop an e-training especially focusing on this target group. Following a structure of six work packages, the project will deliver five intellectual Outputs: - Intellectual Output 1 includes an offline training, integrating known principles in the field of storytelling which are relevant to use to combat loneliness among our target groups; -Intellectual Output 2 contains an e-training in which the offline tool is translated into a digital instrument. This translation will take care in close collaboration with the aimed target groups; - Intellectual Output 3 includes a supportive training for volunteers and professionals working with lonely older adults for whom the initial training is developed. This training will be launched at a transnational train-the-trainer event before the pilot starts in which the outputs are tested; - Intellectual Output 4 is a handbook, based on the pilot. The handbook includes the results and a manual for the different steps in execution of the trainings modules; - Intellectual Output 5 includes a toolkit for implementation, integrating all the delivered outputs. The toolkit provides practical tips and tricks to implement the outputs in other settings. The toolkit will be officially launched at a finalizing multiplier event at the end of the project;

The ehcoBUTLER Idea: Nowadays, it is a fact that Europe is ageing. A common characteristic of elders is the frequent occurrence of either physical or mild cognitive impairments. This situation brings new challenges in how to improve the independence and quality of life of elderly people and promote their good health in different ways. The ehcoBUTLER project addresses this challenge by developing an ICT technological platform with both leisure and care apps. The main objective of ehcoBUTLER is to demonstrate the socio-economic benefits from the deployment of several innovative and user led ICT pilot projects based on different business models in order to be able to translate promising results into scalable practice across Europe. How the objectives will be achieved: The ehcoBUTLER Consortium is composed by a multidisciplinary combination of specialist partners on their areas and responsibilities, in order to satisfy the requirements emerging from the EU Call and the particular PHC-20 topic. With this consortium we expect to contribute to break the technological barrier that exists nowadays between the elderly and the ICTs, encouraging the e-Inclusion, to facilitate psychological and cognitive techniques and support procedures, both for the elderly people and for the informal and formal caregivers, to develop an interoperable and open ICT platform particularly designed and adapted to elderly people, to demonstrate the ROI from several four business models based on the deployment of this ICT platform and to generate an ecosystem for apps provider that will allow end users to integrate all the leisure and care related activities in just one platform. To ensure that the platform can be scaled to an operational deployment in the European Market we will deploy ehcoBUTLER in 5 countries and 7 pilot sites to reach the higher number of users and to test the suitability of ehcoBUTLER in different but related business cases.

The Silver Learners project was a strategic partnership for exchanging good practice between ten partners from Germany, Great Britain (3), Hungary, Luxembourg, The Netherlands (2) and Poland (2). The project took take place between 1 September 2016 and 30 September 2018 and was aimed at representatives of local education centres, i.e. at the directors of these institutions and the teaching staff who give lessons to groups of learners aged 60+. The consortium was structured to ensure that various local education facilities with a range of main strengths and focuses were involved as well as transregionally active associations. The aim of Silver Learners was to improve the programme offered by education centres, taking account of the challenges of demographic change as well as the associated altered circumstances and education practices of senior citizens: The older generation needs to be provided with educational support to enable them to remain active members of society and face the challenges of growing old independently for as long as possible. In this context, the fields of media competence (using ICT and new technical resources) and health were regarded as being particularly significant. In addition, it is essential to reach poorly educated target groups. There was for instance an exchange of tried-and-tested education models from the various countries for improving the learning situation of the elderly and also to jointly develop and implement ideas and concepts. New, innovative educational concepts for the older generation were developed on the basis of the different experiences. Since, at present, the adult education centres are primarily attended by the so-called middle classes, the objective was and is to focus on persons who have had fewer educational opportunities. This entailed analysing the motivation for learning as well as the options and the existing barriers to education. The project encompassed seven meetings of the project partners. The time between the meetings was used for processing the results and disseminating and applying them locally as well as for preparing the next convention and planning additional cooperation between individual partners. The meetings of the partners were organised as workshops made up of presentations, dialogues in varying work groups, and excursions. The following issues were regarded as particularly crucial:-Competencies and learning abilities of the elderly and the consequent requirements on educational programmes;-Communication for and with senior citizens - How to reach the target groups, in particular those that are not so well educated? How can the communication skills of elderly people be intensified (use of ICT, social networks, language, etc.)?-Further education for everyday life – How can the older generation be supported in their ICT-influenced daily lives (using a PC, online banking/shopping/booking, voluntary work)? How can new tools be made appropriate for elderly people?-Further education on health – Besides keeping healthy (sport, prevention) and new technical aids, this focused mainly on dealing with age-related diseases such as dementia. The venues and thematic focuses of the meetings were selected so as to ensure that the partners could best introduce their strengths into the discussion. The first event was an introductory kick-off meeting held in Iserlohn. After five content-related workshops in Nyíregyháza, Luxembourg, Middelburg, Stockport and Cambridge, a final summarising wrap-up meeting was held in Olszyn at which further projects of individual partners were mentioned, including some within the scope of Erasmus+. Besides the specified aims, teaching staff benefited from the project because their skills were upgraded, especially regarding the interests of the elderly during lessons, the effective use of ICT, and the inclusion of health aspects. This enabled education centres to improve and expand what they had on offer and thus for attendees to commit to the institution. As a result of working together with familiar partners (town twinning, successful partnerships in other EU projects), the networks were reinforced and redefined with the help of new partners, also on a local level. The project partners got to know other countries, embarked on intercultural dialogues and expanded their knowledge, including their linguistic skills. The project was also beneficial to society in Europe as well: well-educated, committed and health-conscious senior citizens face the effects accompanying age with greater confidence. In consequence, the growing generation of elderly people was encouraged to play an active role in society. Thanks to the joint work of ten partners, the results of the project were disseminated in numerous different regions and countries of Europe, thus making a major contribution towards added value in Europe. Detailed information is available at our website: www.project-silver-learners.eu.

Pharaon’s overall objective is to make a reality smart and active living for Europe’s ageing population by creating a set of integrated and highly customizable interoperable open platforms with advanced services, devices, and tools including IoT, artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, smart wearables, big data, and intelligent analytics. Platform interoperability will be implemented within Pharaon ecosystems and platforms, as well as other standardised platforms within health and other domains (energy, transport and smart cities). Pharaon will consider relevant standards and will contribute to them with the help of the two standardisation bodies of the consortium. Data privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability and openness will be key design principles to pursue through the requirements generated by Pharaon experts. Pharaon will be built upon mature existing state-of-the-art open platforms and technologies/tools provided by the partners, which will be customised and will implement cloud technologies, AI techniques and traditional algorithms for big data intelligent analytics. A user-centric approach will be followed. Pharaon will evolve based on the user feedback and the results from a MAFEIP framework that will be implemented for impact assessment. Both inputs will be used to find innovative solutions through two “open calls”: (1) single solutions, and (2) solutions to be demonstrated in small-scale pilots. Pharaon’s integrated platforms will be validated in two stages: pre-validation and large-scale pilots (LSPs), in six different pilot sites: Murcia and Andalusia (Spain), Portugal, The Netherlands, Slovenia and Italy. A team of partners in each pilot will ensure its right development. A set of development tools will be created and made publicly available to simplify the customisation and integration. These tools and the results of dissemination will spread the generated knowledge to promote the development of new solutions similar to Pharaon.

The European population is ageing and more people live into old age. This also means that there is an increase of age-related diseases such as dementia, placing higher levels of demand on caring services. People that suffer from dementia are excluded from social productivity, are at high risk of social exclusion and have a high demand for care. At the same time, there is an increasing lack of professionals in elderly care [2016, Eurostat]. Governmental authorities across Europe recognize this trend and promised more investments in the domain of elderly care. However, students do not consider the elderly sector as a fulfilling career option, leaving a gap between supply and demand for the care of the elderly. The iConnect project aimed to motivate students to make elderly care a potential and viable option for their study and future career, in parallel to the social inclusion of older people with dementia, by bringing them together in an intergenerational creative approach. We aimed to improve the knowledge and skills of students, the future care professionals, with our innovative creative learning program combining elements like music, art, play and drama. This way students, but also other stakeholders involved, will be equipped to contribute to the goals of dementia friendly environments. Through our project students gained new knowledge and skills related to communication, empathy and creativity, into practice while they make contact with people with dementia. People with dementia felt recognized and reinforced in their identity which enhanced the quality of life.The project selected a number of stakeholders as participants for activities and the output, being students and educators from Higher Education Institutes (HEI), care organisations and care professionals, specialised in dementia care, older people with dementia and their family and/or care givers and policy makers.Throughout the project we delivered 4 intellectual outputs; the Needs Specification Report (a research on current practices related to the use of creative elements and the needs of all involved stakeholders for the implementation of a inclusive dementia care), an innovative Module with learning and teaching material for educators and students, a Blended Learning Platform (based on Moodle structure) and the Transnational Implementation Guidelines, which helps HEI’s and educators across Europe to implement the training, the platform and the teaching material, supporting the impact, replicability and sustainability of iConnect. The guidelines takes up all the findings from the pilot and is complete package, including a teacher and student module, assessment methods, PowerPoints, manuals, index, video instructions and the online blended platform.The iConnect module adapted a co-design and partnership approach amongst students, educators, care providers and older people with dementia in developing all material and the online learning platform. Therefore creation of these 4 end products was supported by activities organised within the context of the project. We organized focus sessions, held interviews and organised an international Learning, Teaching and Training Activity (LTTA), which was a peer-to-peer training in which the participants shared skills and competences. Through the LTTA we trained the teachers and staff who would work with students in the pilot later in this project. The module was tested during this pilot of this project with students participating from four different HEI’s; Hogeschool Utrecht (HU, Netherlands), LAB University of Applied Sciences (LAB, Finland), University of Ioannina (UoI, formerly named TEI, Greece) and Udine University (UNIUD, Italy). Throughout the project each partner organised activities such as presentations, workshops and webinars in which the output was disseminated, tested or discussed. From all these activities given feedback was used to optimise the final outputs.At least 1000 stakeholders were reached through dissemination activities with an overall positive response. For the participating stakeholders the direct impact was enriching the awareness, knowledge, skills and attitudes. Especially in presentations, workshops and webinars participants vocalised their interest and accomplished awareness on the subject, which resulted in an increased willingness among educators to include the module within curricula. The module was used in HEI partners during the pilot and is now integrated in the curriculum of all partner HEI’s for the year(s) to come, sometimes even with a elaboration of the module. Participating students developed a compassionate and empathetic attitude to improve caring towards older people with dementia. Teachers felt empowered and equipped they can now transfer this new knowledge and skills on to the students. With older adults with dementia who participated in the pilot a decrease in the aggressive behaviour of the older adults was seen.