How can we create the proper framework to prepare HE students and involve communities to be active in preparing a better future for our ageing population?

During the 25th to 27th of June the CoblAges partners are meeting in Ourense, Spain for the first conjoint staff training to tackle this challenge.

Hosted by the University of Vigo, the partners will be working on harmonizing the CoblAges methodology for using CBL (Community Based Learning) as a tool for Intergenerational Citizenship in preparing higher education students for an ageing world. This will also set up the foundation for the other resources developed within our initiative.

The first day was full of insights and rich in dynamic activities and the partners had the opportunity to visit the Lodoselo community center. Lodoselo is a center for people, for the rural community, where people are an active part and not just recipients of services.
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Keep following us to learn more about our efforts and activities and progress during the training.

Galicia, a community in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, with approximately 3 million inhabitants, has a highly aged population, especially in rural areas, distributed in numerous centres, many of which only live older people. These are villages that are condemned to disappear in a short period of time, due to the lack of generational change.

Boys and girls who are not born in that territory will hardly choose to move to live in that rural environment, unless the dynamics are reversed with clear commitments to promoting a dignified life in rural areas, through the contact of new generations with the cultural heritage kept in the memory of older people, and whose transmission was carried out almost exclusively orally.

It is urgent to recover spaces for intergenerational coexistence, favouring the presence of older people in educational and play spaces for children, and educational projects for children and youth, in spaces usually occupied by older people (community premises, day centres, community housing...)

This need has also been acknowledged within all CoblAges partners' countries and thus we have joined forces to develop resources in order to integrate community-based learning into higher education and equip students to be better prepared to address the challenges of an ageing world.