Some inspiring echoes from our member organisations of the past year

On 3 July, we held a meeting with our ESU Executive Committee. Annually at the Summer Academy there is an opportunity for our member organisations to present their ‘Country Reports’ in which they give some insight in the proceedings of their organisation during the past year and/or about ‘good practices’ they experienced as well as good initiatives that have noticed in regard to the senior generation. We experience this happening as a unique occasion to learn from each other. In order to give some direction to the proceedings of reviewing the reports, our secretariat prepared two questions for our Executive Committee members:

• Do you have experience with certain initiatives taken during the pandemic in view of promoting the well-being of older persons, which you want to communicate with colleagues in Europe as a good practice?

• Europe puts its future policy in a ‘greener, more digital and more resilient perspective’. What accents can we, as seniors, highlight in that perspective?

Throughout the submitted documents we repeatedly saw the following recurring ‘issues’ and we share the opinion that these are certainly to be followed up:

– The role of the government as guardian of qualitative ‘long term care’;

– Prevention of social isolation and loneliness;

– Access to and ability to communicate via the internet (digital literacy);

– Solidarity between generations.

We received eight responses of which five were answers to the questions, which we have summarised in the attached report. Not every organisation answered the questions, sometimes a separate report was given, which can be found at the bottom of the document. Otherwise, you can find the answers per question in the document.

You can find the overview here