Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Programme 2014 - 2020 INTERREG V-A Finland - Estonia - Latvia - Sweden (Central Baltic)

Date of latest update: 2023-11-11

Description

Description (EN):

The project ‘Let us be active!’, realized by partners from Estonia, Finland and Latvia addresses the problem of social exclusion and loneliness of the older people through the improvement of information about existing and development of new opportunities for voluntary work for seniors in Pärnu, Turku and Riga. As the population of people in retirement age is rapidly growing, the problem is accurate and important to be tackled within the Central Baltic region and new forms of work with older people need to be found. The exclusion as well as loneliness influences negatively the overall health and wellbeing of older people. Thus, there is a strong need to develop programmes to promote activities of seniors in their communities. All of the participating cities share the challenges and they lack experience and expertise to overcome them alone in a non-standard way. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the improvement of social inclusion of the older people in Central Baltic Region. This will be achieved by working together with three municipalities on developing a programme that will allow older people to stay active and participate in their communities with voluntary work. The project will analyze existing offer of activities available for seniors, examine seniors’ needs in the area of volunteering and produce guidelines for social and health care workers to promote and support voluntarism of the older people. Workshops, meetings and events for seniors, health care workers and social workers will be organized to develop the new form of voluntary activities. At the same time, the information platform in each city will be established to reach out seniors. It will be managed by seniors themselves. The cross-border cooperation will allow the cities to learn from each other, share experiences and support each other with their specific expertise. The project will be supported by the experts from World Health Organization. Information added on 2020-05-14, regarding the mitigation of the effects of COVID-19 (the coronavirus pandemic that started in 2019) (English language only): Mental well-being plays an important role, when social connections are limited. A good example of overcoming this is a call centre service for the elderly created as part of the project Let Us Be Active!. The call centre is operated by elderly as well and provides a talking companion and information about activities.

Achievements (EN):

Let Us Be Active! improved the community of elderly in Estonia, Finland and Latvia: Let Us Be Active! improved the community of elderly in three cities: Pärnu in Estonia, Turku in Finland and Riga in Latvia. The project empowered seniors through a participatory approach and made volunteering options visible, for example at the call center in Riga or through the Tripfriend activity in Turku. The elderly got an opportunity to be socially active, do something meaningful, find fulfillment, find an activity that fits them best and establish friendship. In Pärnu a website on volunteering made activities available for seniors. The project also changed the procedures and routines for professionals. They got a deeper awareness of senior volunteering and options that can be recommended to seniors. The guidelines for social workers on volunteering are available online in four languages, and the city administration in the partner cities have decided to continue managing the services after the project’s end. The project succeeded to involve three times more participating seniors (300 > 862) and social workers/health care professionals (105 > 384) than expected.

Website: http://centralbaltic.eu/

Expected Results (EN): R4.1. Communities with improvements

Expected Outputs (EN):

The project will produce the results important and relevant from the point of view of improving the social inclusion of the older people in the participating municipalities. The main project results include: 1. Established and tested the information and support system for the seniors in each participating municipality; 2. Mapped and promoted activities relevant and suitable for older people – in form of brochures, distributed during the events, through the city workers and information system;3. Enhanced cooperation of health professionals, social workers and senior organizations for the better support of older people;4. Improved capacity of older people to participate in the voluntary work in their communities;5. Enhanced involvement of the older people in the voluntary work in their communities; 6. Elaborated and tested guidelines for establishing and supporting the volunteering activities for older people; 7. Improved awareness of the families about the opportunities of the older people to be active.All of these results contribute to the improvement of the health and well-being of the older people and their communities and in this way it directly supports the realization of the Programme result indicator. It is expected that at least 100 older people and their families in every municipality will be influenced by the results of the project.

Thematic information

Health and social services Demographic change and immigration Social inclusion and equal opportunities

Specific Objective: More people benefiting from stronger Central Baltic communities

Thematic Objective: (10) investing in education, training and vocational training for skills and lifelong learning by developing education and training infrastructure

Investment Priority: (10 ETC) ETC specific, for cross-border cooperation: investing in education, training and vocational training for skills and lifelong learning by developing and implementing joint education, vocational training and training schemes

Partners (4)

Lead Partner: Itämeren alueen Terveet Kaupungit ry

Address: Vanha Suurtori 7, 20500 Turku, Finland

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.marebalticum.org

Total budget: EUR 84 103.00

ERDF budget: EUR 63 077.25

Turun kaupunki

Name: Turun kaupunki

Department: Wellfare Division

Address: Yliopistonkatu 30, 20100 Turku, Finland

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.turku.fi

Total budget: EUR 79 418.90

ERDF budget: EUR 59 564.18

Rīgas dome

Name: Rīgas dome

Department: Department of Welfare

Address: Baznīcas street 19/23, LV-1010 Riga, Latvia

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.ld.riga.lv

Total budget: EUR 54 648.00

ERDF budget: EUR 46 450.80

Pärnu Linnavalitsus

Name: Pärnu Linnavalitsus

Department: Department of Social Welfare

Address: Suur-Sepa 16, 80098 Pärnu, Estonia

Legal status: public

Website: http://www.parnu.ee

Total budget: EUR 45 836.97

ERDF budget: EUR 38 961.42

Partners map

Partners and Projects info

Turun kaupunki

Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Partners and Projects info

Riga City Council

Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Partners and Projects info

Pärnu City Government

Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Partners and Projects info

Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association

Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Project acronym: Let us be active!

Project start date: 2015-05-01

Project end date: 2017-02-28

Project status: closed

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 264 006.87

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 208 053.65

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 208 053.65.

Documents

Documents on this project are listed below, and organised by category. Please note field "Data source", attached to each document. Keep.eu users are free to use these documents as long as they mention the data source and keep.eu.

Reports

Guidelines in Finnish

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Report

Data source: http://database.centralbaltic.eu/results

Publication date: 2020-01-27

Document date: 2017-02-28

Languages: fi

Attachment file: Download

Guidelines in Latvian

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Report

Data source: http://database.centralbaltic.eu/results

Publication date: 2020-01-27

Document date: 2017-02-28

Languages: lv

Attachment file: Download

Guidelines in Estonian

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Report

Data source: http://database.centralbaltic.eu/results

Publication date: 2020-01-27

Document date: 2017-02-28

Languages: et

Attachment file: Download

Guidelines in English

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Report

Data source: http://database.centralbaltic.eu/results

Publication date: 2020-01-27

Document date: 2017-02-28

Languages: en

Attachment file: Download

Presentations

CB_Priority 4.1.pdf

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Presentation

Publication date: 2020-01-27

Document date: 2017-02-28

Languages: en

Attachment file: Download

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2014 - 2020 INTERREG V-A Finland - Estonia - Latvia - Sweden (Central Baltic)

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2023-11-11

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

137 / 137 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

663 / 663 (100%)

Notes on the data

Information provided by the Programme. Achievements were retrieved by Interact from the Programme website (http://centralbaltic.eu/), or a website directly linked from it, on 2021-11-08, 2023-01-12 and 2024-03-08.

Languages

Contact Form

Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

Description

Thematic information

Partners (4)

Partners map

Summary

Documents

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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