The project will be realized on our home turf, in municipalities around Warsaw, as well as in Łódź, where we will collaborate with our partner, the LEVEL UP Association. LEVEL UP will support us with staff and experience. According to our research, the youth from the areas of our operations do not feel any sense of influence over the subjects and the format of their education. Interviewed individuals pointed to a lack of activities they could be actively involved in. Simultaneously, according to the data from the Eurostat, seniors are less socially active that average citizens. Other data from Eurostat points to a high number of suicides among seniors in Poland. Meanwhile, Scandinavian countries where the elderly remain more active show a significantly lower numbers of suicides among the seniors.
We are responding to these issues by organizing a series of inter-generational workshops. During the course of our workshops seniors will exchange knowledge and experiences with the youth on anything from health, saving money, technologies, and climate preservation. We will organize a working visit with our partner in Norway – Folkeakademiet Rogaland – during which we will learn the teaching methods of their People’s School. We will learn about the practices of the institution designed to develop a sense of sagency in its students, building an inter-generational dialogue, and teaching active involvement in civic issues. We would like to introduce this method to selected schools in our area of operations, organize workshops for the youth and support them in conducting their own research projects. On the basis of their research, we will create local initiatives related to civic engagement and environmental protections. We will conclude the project by preparing materials highlighting the best practices for youth engagement and inter-generational activities.
