Hands-on SHAFE Newsletter #1

Hands-on SHAFE Newsletter #1

Introduction

Welcome to this first Newsletter of the Hands-on SHAFE Erasmus+ project! We are happy to inform you about the progress of the project and the results we have already produced. If you have questions, suggestions for cooperation or any further comments, please let us know (Javier Ganzarain and Willeke van Staalduinen, info@afedemy.eu).

The project Hands-on SHAFE

Erasmus+ Hands-on SHAFE project develops trainings to implement Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE). SHAFE focus on people and places. They combine built environments (housing, public spaces and buildings) with smart ICT applications, social participation and healthy solutions, to enable more independent living, better participation in society and wellbeing for citizens. The training targets volunteers, (informal) caregivers and people who want to deliver services and products in the SHAFE field.

The new concept of SHAFE was created by Carina Dantas (Cáritas Diocesana de Coimbra, Portugal) and Willeke van Staalduinen (AFEdemy, The Netherlands) in 2017. It is based on the desire to implement SHAFE across Europe, fostering happier and healthier people everywhere. This idea took shape and became a solid movement with over 170 partner organisations and around 300 Stakeholders involved.

In Hands-on SHAFE the following partners are involved:

• airelle, France
• Cáritas Diocesana de Coimbra, Portugal
• ISIS GmbH, Germany
• Politechnika Warszawa, Poland
• Technological University Dublin, Ireland
• AFEdemy, The Netherlands (European coordination)

The progress of the Hands-on SHAFE project is reported in a chronological order hereafter.

National Reports on SHAFE

We started the project with a desk research, stakeholder interviews and focus group meetings to picture the current knowledge, policies, opportunities and future needs on SHAFE training content. This resulted in seven National Reports from seven European countries: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal and The Netherlands.

Further reading: National Reports.

European Synthesis Report and Factsheet

Smartphone usage and telecare, healthy lifestyles and caretaking of people with impairments, accessibility and energy sustainable design, basic business training and creating a SHAFE portfolio, communication and presentation techniques are examples of learning content that should be developed in the Hands-on SHAFE project.

Further reading: European Synthesis Report and Factsheet.

European Compendium of Good Practices on SHAFE

The national researchers learned that there is to be found a real treasure of good practices on SHAFE that is relevant for SHAFE facilitators. The practices have been collected and described in the European Compendium of Good Practices on SHAFE.

Further reading: European Compendium of Good Practices on SHAFE.

Focus of the training content

The end-users of SHAFE measures are persons who are in need of cure or care or aiming at a healthy lifestyle to prevent potential diseases or decline due to already existing conditions. Although this covers in principle all ages and health states, older adults, persons with a disability, as well as their relatives, are the predominant targeted client groups. The role of trained SHAFE facilitators will be to personally advise the users and/or provide practical support in promoting healthy lifestyles, as well as comfortable and safe living environments. A broad description of the training content will be published in the Special Edition on the Decade of Active and Healthy Ageing, issued by Translational Medicine. This article will be published soon.

Please send a message to Willeke van Staalduinen (willeke@afedemy.eu) to receive a copy.

Educational framework

Gathering all the necessary elements of the SHAFE learning content, brought us to the conclusion that an educational framework had to be developed. This framework consists of an overview of the separate modules and their respective relationships. SMART, HEALTHY, BUILT, BUSINESS and TRANSVERSAL (GENERAL) domains will be the overall training content. People can choose which modules they will follow and want to finalise. Informative pathways will guide them with their choices. The educational framework is still under construction before it can go public.

Certification or official recognition

Together with the development of the educational framework, the consortium partners investigated in their respective countries the opportunities for an official recognition or certification of the SHAFE trainings. Ireland and Portugal may be best equipped for that purpose. Conditions to achieve recognition or certification are, for example, to offer learning modules (units of competence) of 25 hours volume of learning, to clearly define the educational goals and learning outcomes. Units of competence are divided in several smaller training units. The SHAFE Units of Competence and Training Units will become public after finalisation of the learning material.

Development of training modules

Since December 2020, partners are working on the development of the training content. The training content is addressed to people with lower skills or lower qualifications. That means short sentences, clear explanations and pictures will be used to support the explanations. With that purpose, we make use of an e-learning authoring software that offers good opportunities for engaging learning and assessments. It offers the opportunity to include videos, quizzes, drag-and-drop activities and other additional assessment tools and to integrate all in an engaging, accessible and easy-to-use and navigate e-learning platform. Until June 2021 the first half of the training content will be developed, translated and assessed during a Learning Training and Teaching Activity with partners’ staff. This first half will become available on the e-learning platform Hands-on SHAFE in Summer 2021. The second half will follow soon after.

Personas

The SHAFE training will make use of personas representing the end-users or SHAFE entrepreneurs. End-user personas are existing personas, coming from the project Blueprint (We4AHA) in the frame of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (2020), the project GrowMeUp (finalised in 2019) and the Phara-on project (started in 2019). The personas will become available on the e-learning platform Hands-on SHAFE.

Next newsletter

The next newsletter of the Hands-on SHAFE project will appear in May 2021.

Notification

You receive this newsletter because you are involved in Hands-on SHAFE project as associated partner, or in COST Action 19136 NET4Age-Friendly or in the SHAFE Stakeholders Network.

Hands-on SHAFE is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, Key Action 204 Adult Education programme.

The European Commission's support for this project and the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.