BACKGROUND As educators, we are noticing that the gap between young generations and elderly people is growing both from a cultural and from a human point of view. Our commitment through this project is to let students become aware of the importance to know, interact with, learn from, respect elderly people to the benefit of everybody. Demographic changes are creating a new society. Ever fewer young people and young adults, ever more older workers, pensioners and very elderly people. This demographic trend is becoming a significant issue for governments and communities, particularly since older persons are mostly a neglected group, invisible to those who promote economic and social development. Our societies will have to invent new ways of liberating the potential of young people and older citizens The 2030 Agenda’ transformational vision and the pledge to “leave no one behind” means that development agendas must include all persons, of all ages. Creating moments of significant interactions through educational and leisure activities will be an important opportunity to let young people increase awareness on the objective of both learning important attitudes, knowledge and values from old generations and the issue of leaving no one behind. Furthermore, although young people hardly consider it, the benefits from such interactions are not one-directional. Research shows that pairing young and older people has positive consequences for each. In interacting with the older generation, young people can get important advantages for their own growth as human beings and as concerned citizens. This mutual benefit is the most compelling reason why we intend as educators to foster actions that connect young and old. Finally, we are observing that schools are often isolated from their own territory. The project aims to a deeper interaction with other components of the Community, mainly those dealing with old people such as Rest homes, Universities of elderly, Senior Cultural centres, Music and Arts centres, which may significantly provide an added value to the education of young generations and their development as a whole. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES Teachers and pupils will be engaged in organising, implementing, acting interaction with old people through different activities, in different countries, involving various fields such as Music, Art, Technology, Literature, Sport. NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: Pupils are meant to be the main stakeholders in this project. The involvement will be conveniently split over curricular lessons, extra-curricular activities such as afternoon clubs for the work on the territory and for the arrangement of some peculiar activities such as recordings, filming, interviewing. About three hundred pupils on the four partner schools will be directly involved in the different project’s activities over the two years. Teachers of different subjects – mainly History and Literature, Music, Technology, Art, Science and English teachers will work on the project’s activities. Elderly people living in their homes or in Rest homes, playing more or less active roles in their communities in different forms will be directly involved. Local institutions, organisations and media for activities of research, promotion and dissemination of the project’s results METHODLOGY TO BE USED IN CARRYING OUT THE PROJECT: The involvement will be split over curricular lessons; extra-curricular activities such as afternoon clubs for the work on the territory and for the arrangement of some peculiar activities such as recordings, filming, interviewing; practical activities, workshops, meetings, exhibitions during mobilities. SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE RESULTS AND IMPACT ENVISAGED. POTENTIAL LONGER TERM BENEFITS: Through this specific project on Intergenerational dialogue, we think that goals will be evident thanks to the important and fundamental interaction between schools and their territories. We expect that schools, and particularly pupils, will develop awareness of what is around them also in terms of elderly people of different social, cultural and health levels, institutions, private and public bodies, places, art, music, traditions and community as a whole. In the same way, an increased interest for the school is expected by the territory, thus reducing the tendency to perceive it as a world close within its walls. Our expectations in the long-term perspective concern some key aspects, such as the permanent collaboration school/territory/community for the prosecution of the process of the Inter-Generational approach started thanks to the project,the implementation of strategies and occasions for the continuation of the dialogue process, the arrangement of regular occasions of inter-generational meetings by creating direct involvement and awareness in young generations.
The main commitment of our project has been, from the beginning, to make our students aware of the importance of knowing, interacting with, learning from, respecting the elderly in all aspects and moments of their lives. For this reason we have chosen to achieve our goal through activities and experiences that touch emotional chords common to all generations, passing through life experiences experienced by the elderly in their youth and by the youngest in their adolescence, exploring fields such as music, art, technology and literature. In addition to the contents, we also worked on the means and strategies, involving the elderly in virtual experiences and accompanying the children in real and meaningful comparisons with other generations. We have worked, in each country, to ensure that our schools do not feel isolated from the context of their respective territories but increasingly linked and in interaction with structures such as rest homes, cultural centers for the elderly as well as local authorities in all their declinations. By sharing the experiences of individual mobilities, but also those between mobilities, with the children's families, with the entire school community and with the territory, we managed to create a network of relationships destined to continue beyond the Connecting ages project itself . For Italy, for example, and for the lead school Ic Fogazzaro of Noventa Vicentina, the experience with the local retirement home also continued in the summer months of the project with meetings and readings from the youngest to the elderly during the summer holidays and after the project conclusion, some classes will participate in an awareness project on the topic of Alzheimer's created by the local rest home. As educators we have chosen to work on values common to all generations such as civil commitment and participation as well as on the development of basic skills and key skills in citizenship, personal, social and cultural and expression: sustainable development of society, the awareness of how ideas and creativity are expressed in different ways between generations, the promotion of healthy lifestyles, also from an intergenerational perspective. Common experience for students and elderly people was music, cooking, photography, cinema and art in general and the common thread, however, was verbal memories and their transposition into images, even virtual ones, and written words by the children.