Senior Councils are some of the most important tools for including the elderly population in the local government’s decision processes. But according to the research conducted by the Association of the Creative Initiatives “ę” and the Shipyard Foundation many of the existing councils are not very active and their members would like to be more involved. The reasons for low levels of participation are the lack of knowledge and skills among the government officials, lack of support from the local authorities, and poor outreach to the community regarding the Councils. We asked 114 individuals from municipalities in Zachodniopomorskie Voivodeship whether there existed any strategy or policy regarding the senior policy, or a document that comprehensively describes actions taken to better the lives of their senior populations. Only 11% of the respondents said they were aware of such documents.
We responded to these issues by supporting Senior Councils from Zachodnipomorskie Voivodeship in their work, as well as launching initiatives designed to include and engage elder citizens. We have organized a series of workshops on senior activities, promotion strategies and team building attended by local government employees from different municipalities. We have designed three local senior policy proposals for Dębno municipality, and towns of Wałcz and Sławno. We passed these along to the authorities that turned them into a resolution. We have prepared a handbook entitled “Senior Policy in Practice” which is a collection of good practices for designing these types of policies. We have also supported seniors in realizing their initiatives to show how much agency elder citizens can have under the right circumstances. One of the groups organized “Seniors’ Ball”, second one organized an integrational day-trip and the third group – a few “Senior days” to help integrate seniors from their municipality. Participants watched an art exhibit put on by the senior citizens and took part in the inter-generational poetry meetings. Finally, a “Silver Conference” took place. It served as a networking event for the participants and a chance to exchange ideas on how to make life of seniors in Poland better.
We know from our evaluation surveys that local government officials and seniors increased their knowledge regarding the work of Senior Councils and teamwork within the groups. We have noticed that the initiatives helped integrate seniors from the participating municipalities.