Making friends at an older age
Friendships are a source of stimulation, pleasure and support. If your circle of friends unintentionally shrinks, you may feel lonely. And later in life there is sometimes a barrier to making contact. The European project FRIEND is therefore developing a friendship course for older people. This project is a follow-up to the online friendship course and helps elderly people to make new friends or improve existing contacts. The participants build up confidence -step by step- to show initiative and make contact. In this way they learn to become more socially active in a way that suits them, and they are taken out of their isolation.
The course
The friendship course is developed by a consortium of European partners in collaboration with older people and trainers. The course is based on scientific research and uses various learning methods such as theory, exercises, assignments and videos. Also a toolkit is being developed with a train-the-trainer program, so that the course can be given in many places. The course will be tested with older people and trainers.
European consortium
The consortium developing the course started in January 2024 and has partners from all over Europe with different expertise. The FRIEND project team consists of the following partners: Stichting Gouden Dagen (Netherlands), Leyden Academy (Netherlands), Akademia Humanistyczno Ekonomica (Poland), Approximar (Portugal), Anziani e Non Solo (Italy) and Fundacion Harena (Spain). This project is made possible by Erasmus+ and the European Union.
