Digital storytelling is a powerful tool for promoting various prosocial initiatives and offers significant benefits to seniors. It enhances their digital skills, fosters creativity, improves cognitive functioning (especially for those with dementia), boosts their sense of well-being, and promotes social inclusion. Our project focused on using digital storytelling to encourage civic participation among elderly women. We developed practical, user-friendly resources specifically tailored for adult learners, particularly women, as well as for educators working with this group. The proposal described horizontal objectives—inclusion and diversity, and sectoral—creating and promoting learning opportunities and improving the competencies of educators. We wanted to achieve senior women’s inclusion and diversity through digital storytelling as a powerful approach to empower this group and foster social engagement. Project partnership tailored workshops and training for elderly, and promoted digital literacy by offering accessible digital literacy storytelling programs designed specifically for senior women. We wanted to strengthen the adult educators' ability to teach digital storytelling to elderly women.
The population of older adults in the EU has been steadily increasing, with women making up the majority at 20.3% in 2019. This shift in the EU's demographic structure has significant social and economic implications, highlighting the vulnerability of this group. Many older individuals, particularly women, face challenges that are not adequately addressed, often leading to social exclusion. This exclusion adversely affects their wellbeing and the overall social cohesion. The EU Gender Equality Report emphasizes that women, in particular, experience greater barriers to accessing material resources and participating in civic life compared to men. Digital storytelling is an effective method of promoting different prosocial initiatives. Our project was about digital storytelling promotion for civic participation for elderly women. We addressed the needs of our main target groups - 1) senior women, namely, tackling their digital up-skilling and social inclusion with digital storytelling approach and 2) adult educators, namely, the need of easy-to-use and concise training materials and training platform for elderly education.