Innovation: Active and healthy ageing projects of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

International

AAI Domains:

• Independent, healthy and secure living (care to older adults, access to health care services, lifelong learning)

• Participation in society (voluntary activity, social connectedness, political participation)

The Red Cross and Red Crescent have a long and noble history of addressing social issues and meeting social needs on the ground at local level and through campaigning work with local and national governments and with international bodies. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has a large network of national organisations and local branches that has hundreds of thousands of active volunteers across Europe and they have recognised the challenges of ageing societies. There are a range of innovative local projects operating in a variety of locations that contribute to active ageing in many different ways.

In Romania, the Club of Generations is an inter-generational project based in the county of Harghita in central Romania that aims to change the image of older people as a burden on society through the inter-generational exchange of skills and joint activities. The Club of Generations provides meaningful roles for older people who are able to share accumulated craft knowledge with younger people and to learn new skills, such as using mobile phones and computers, and to build mutual respect and understanding across generational boundaries.

The Kupan (Swedish for beehive) meeting places are small Red Cross shops that have become community hubs in more than 250 communities across Sweden. In addition to being a volunteer-run charity shop, the Kupan have become a meeting place for people of all ages but especially for older people who are at risk of social isolation and loneliness. The activities vary but include sharing time for a tea or coffee, conversation groups and listening to music.

Preventing the abuse and mistreatment of older people is one of three supporting interventions in the World Health Organisation’s strategy for active ageing in Europe and in Serbia through its Home Care programme the Red Cross is educating volunteers and the general public about this often hidden problem. Older volunteers staff a telephone helpline that older people experiencing abuse can contact to receive assistance in dealing with their situation. In Georgia, the difficulties that older people can experience when trying to access health care and welfare services has been addressed through trained volunteers operating from social centres delivering services and support to around 12,000 older people across all regions.

More than 200 volunteers, many of them older people, are actively engaged in a variety of activities including learning opportunities, support for older people to start their own small business, advocating for the needs of older people with policy makers and accessing funding for medication. In Lisbon, volunteers provide guidance to patients in hospitals with basic but important tasks such as eating meals. In busy hospitals that have been hard pressed to meet the needs of their patients there is likely to be a role for volunteers to play.

In Montenegro, independent living is enabled for older people by Home Care programme volunteers of all ages who provide support with the activities of daily life such as grocery shopping, help with visiting the doctor or other appointments and with light household tasks. The young people who volunteer as part of the programme provide an inter-generational element to a programme for some of the more deprived older people in communities in Montenegro.

In relation to the active ageing index, these programmes are invariably based on voluntary activities that the Red Cross and Red Crescent mobilises. Some programmes provide care to older adults to enable independent living, there is some scope for political participation in the advocacy element of the project in Georgia that also aims to improve access to health care services while lifelong learning as part of a process of inter-generational exchange is the essential feature of the Club of Generations in Romania. What they all share is building social connectedness between older people and across the generations so that active ageing is part of the way that people of all ages live.