Aging, active aging, and successful aging are some terms that anyone can hear more nowadays when compared to before. The gradually increasing life expectancy and number of old people in the society has led to an increasing importance and feeling of elderliness as a phase of life in developing countries. World Health Organization(WHO) puts out that there are some "significant changes" in elderliness such as "shifts in roles and social positions, and the need to deal with the loss of close relationships." The organization also gives the number of old people as 11% now and claims that this percentage will rise by 20's% by 2050. 6 partners from different parts of Europe came together to run this project on a European basis because our target group live longer with less stress in our partner countries which have Age Friendly Cities (AFC) designated by WHO. We aim to equip our elderly people with new methods of stress management, health-financial-digital literacy, and other such basic needs of our age as ICT and foreign language skills. We are well aware of the United Nations(UN) Principles for Older Persons, which clearly indicates some such basic rights of the old people as "participation, care, self-fulfillment and dignity". Thanks to our project, our target group is going to find new ways of self engagement as UN stated: "Older persons should be able to pursue opportunities for the full development of their potential." Besides the UN Principles, there are some other international documents designed for the rights of the elderly, all of which aim to form healthy life areas to meet such basic needs as food, shelter, resting and other social and cultural needs of the elderly. The project AGES has been created for another specific reason; one of our primary objectives coincides with the European Commission Lifelong Learning Strategy, which is "Encouraging the participation of people of all ages in lifelong learning" The partners' old population density is more than the world average(changing from 14.5% to 31.75%). Taking these statistics into account together with the fact that our cities are considered as habitable cities for the elderly, and some of these group lead their lives alone ,this isolated lonesomes need being socially included by letting them going out in public and giving them the chance for it. By creating an awareness on our target group about the European issues and the European level of life standards of the elderly which we are going to observe via our international meetings in which our partners are going to share their best practices, we are going to catch the European benchmarks that are shown in EU Strategical Plan. Although it was outlined as 15% in the European Strategical Plan, we would like to enhance this rate of people engaged in lifelong learning at least to 25%. There will be such intergenerational activities as; -health seminar (to raise awareness of the target group about active and successful aging) -sports on World Seniors' Day (Aug 21) (in an open-to-public area to direct the target group to a healthy life) -memory enhancement activities&laughter therapies -traditional arts (all special and traditonal to partner countries - this will be our commitment to reviving of cultural heritage) -drama (as a tool of self reflection and realization. A theatre will be staged in the end) The partners of AGES are also aiming to raise quality and to adapt our adult educations to the changing technologies by involving ourselves in social, economic, political and intercultural bondings arising from the globalizing world. What is more, our target group's involvement in our activities will also help Europe reach its economic and social targets by reducing the risk of social exclusion of the most vulnerable group of the society, the elderly, thanks to an actively aging target group. Europe will benefit from our project since it will also help our cultural heritages revive through our traditional art activities. The project AGES will be remarkable with its outputs as well; IO1:A Guidebook of the Age Friendly Cities and Active Aging in Europe: Being in multilingual (7 languages), It will serve as the basic handbook for the future researchers and analysts in this field. IO2:The Video AGES with best practices in partner countriesincluding an animated video portraying the best practices in AFC in Europe. IO3:Online Learning Seniors and Seniors' E-Handbook: An online course how to get involved in civic life and how to find a working activity after retirement is an appropriate tool in the hands of seniors to avoid inactivity and cognitive diseases linked to ageing. Adult educators will also benefit from the impact of having a E-Handbook that can use in their professional practice. IO4:Development of a Digital System "EasyLearn" and a mobile app combining all the IOs and health tips All four IOs will be free open sources and they will also show how AFC features affect active and succesful aging.
Within the concept of active aging, there are more active and successful aging for the elderly, one of the vulnerable groups of society, coping with social isolation after retirement, not detaching from life through lifelong learning, and making cities more suitable for the lives of the elderly within the scope of age-friendly cities. It also includes concepts such as providing all groups in society with the opportunity to benefit from equal rights and opportunities. In this context, the objectives related to the actively ageing phenomenon mentioned with this project are to contribute to more active and successful aging in Çanakkale and other European cities that are project partners, to support the elderly to go through a less stressful aging phase, to see good practices in some age-friendly cities (Lahey, Gijon). This project was written to achieve objectives such as sharing good practices, finding and recommending activities for learning at all ages from the dimension of lifelong learning, post-retirement employment for those who want to continue their working lives and gain economic income, and appropriate career recommendations based on partner countries. In addition, one of the purposes of writing this project was to obtain the intellectual outputs of the project which are the "A Guide for Age-Friendly Cities" and the online Learning Platform/ E-Hanbook and a mobile aplicaiton which will serve as a guide for the elderly population, and to present these intellectual outputs to the service of our target audience.
With the significant increase in the elderly population, especially in Europe and throughout the world, including Turkey, active aging and successful aging are terms that everyone hears more today than before. The gradually increasing life expectancy and the number of old people in the society has led to an increasing importance and feeling of elderliness as a phase of life in developing countries. According to demographic data, the elderly population is increasing rapidly all over the world. It is predicted that one in every five people worldwide will be 60 years of age or older by 2050. It is seen that the ratio of the elderly population in the cities where these project partners are located to the total population in that city is around 20%. Population aging is now an important phenomenon, and given the increasing elderly population, the importance of active aging at the personal, family, societal, governmental and global levels has begun to be understood, and the question of how older individuals find meaning and satisfaction in their own lives has come to the fore at all levels. Besides it shows that Turkey has reached the final stage of demographic transformation and has started to be classified as an old country with its rapidly aging population. Undoubtedly, aging societies is not a phenomenon specific to Turkey. What is unique to Turkey is that the demographic transition, which took a century in Europe, will occur in a much shorter time, such as 27 years, in Turkey, and in this context, Turkey will have to face the problems caused by aging without sufficient past knowledge and experience to combat it. At this point, it is known that international organizations such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations offer solutions to promote a healthy and active aging population. The active aging approach is one of these recommendations. In this context, active aging has become a need and taking actions that will meet all concepts regarding the phenomenon of active aging and meeting with good practices have become important needs. Active aging is the process that involves improving the opportunities that will enable older individuals to meet their needs such as health, safety and social participation in order to strengthen their quality of life. Successful aging should be evaluated not only in old age, but also in all life periods. Active aging also includes many facts such as individuals aging in a healthy way (such as healthy nutrition, sports, stress management, benefiting from health services), productivity, post-retirement employment, social activities at the point of participation in social life, art, lifelong learning, etc. Turkey's new beginning to meet the elderly population along with the increasing elderly population of the world has created both the importance of active aging and the need for active aging. This situation was the motivation for writing this project. With this project, it was aimed to support concrete steps towards active aging by contributing to the importance of active aging by benefiting from the experience and knowledge of partners in Europe who are more experienced than us and have good practice examples in active aging.