This practice is focus to the EDERLY POPULATION
Promote places of encounter and participation where you can continue to cultivate and develop the multiple capacities to achieve an active ageing.
Facilitate certain MANUAL DEVELOPMENT tasks for MAY PERSONS that stimulate, entertain and contribute to improving manual agility and dexterity, fine psychomotor, self-confidence and strengthening their self-esteem.
Spain is one of the ageing countries in Europe, its expected lifetime increases every year.
In Spain gets attention the dates of elderly in Castilla y León, and specially in the province o León. León has a raised percent of people who are more than 65, this rate is higher in rural areas.
One of the challenges that our occidental society has been proposing since the first of XX century is the importance of elderly people. The fall down of the birth rate and the higher life expectancy has taken many elderly people in our territories.
Because of this situation, from the Service of Animación del CEAS our first objective is traying to “improve active ageing of elder people in rural areas both physically, cognitively, psychologically, and socially, paying special attention to cognitive stimulation.
The beneficiaries are elderly men a women living in rural areas located at the follow municipalities: Valverde de la Virgen, Santovenia de la Valdoncina, Chozas de abajo, Onzonilla, Vega de Infanzones, Villadangos del Páramo y Ardón, all of them are Muncipalities less than 20.000 habitants.
Social institutions are Diputación of León and the different municipalities of the territorial demarcation of the CEAS LEÓN II
Nowadays, Seniors arrive with a better quality of life, for this reason, there is an interest in PARTICIPAR, in being ACTIVE, in RELATIONING and performing some activity to entertain themselves.
Talking about MANUAL DESTRECES is talking about MOTRICITY.
The carrying out of this type of activities favors the ACTIVE Aging. Working the MOTRICITY in a playful manner and through daily manual exercises allows greater manual dexterity for daily activities.
“Art helps in the development of the creativity and imagination of the elderly”, especially in manual activities such as painting, drawing and ceramics, which contributes to generating a dexterity not only with the hands, but also connects them with the emotional part, which in some way stimulates their brain.
If we stop to think there are multiple BENEFITS that participating in this type of performance can contribute to our elders:
Any MANUAL ACTIVITY aimed at older adults will favor active aging and will also exercise various abilities that deteriorate over the years.
My experience tells me that this would be a good approach, apart from the benefits we have shown, they look happy and enjoy. They love it.
I think it is very appropriate to carry out it as individual actions/workshops or as activities within a more global project and that particularly for this group, it is very striking and entertaining.
Therefore, for being of their interest they will be very well received, being able to do countless activities with them:
It is proven that this system of work and participation is of great pleasure for the participants who demand it and express to be delighted with their participation in it. This practice has been experienced in the Classrooms of E. Active that I have been developing since 2017.
Both this experience (good practice), as well as all that have been developed with this group of elderly people and within the Active Ageing Program we can qualify them as a success. It is very gratifying to feel the gratitude of all the participants “for having remembered us about them and having had this great idea”,“it helps them to cope with the day to day in the best conditions and most entertaining”. It has made it easier for them to meet, it has provided them with emotional support, in many cases avoiding loneliness…
From an economic point of view, we can say that it is a handicap, because we do not have an economic budget, so we cannot do much. The activity is taught by myself, Community Technician of CEAS and I seek support in the municipalities for materials, photocopies and other…
This good practice has contributed in the elderly to multiple factors:
* It helps them to feel alive, excited, to leave their homes, to relate to others, to set aside sorrows and loneliness, to feel accompanied, to work their multiple capacities: attention concentration, perception, observation, development of intelligence manual skills,…, in short, to work their cognitive development and to age in an active way.
The challenge that older people find when participating in these good practices on many occasions is giving FEELING to their lives, having the opportunity to leave their homes to relate, to carry out activities that keep them active and entertain them….
As for problems of adaptation… recently with the pandemic, which could not be combined, they could not be seen, because I reinvented and prepared booklets with varied tokens through which they could continue to work the different skills, reading, writing, attention, concentration, observation, perception… and we continued to maintain contact promptly to collect and deliver new notebooks. We also maintained telephone contact to solve small doubts, follow up…
This experience, according to the participants, thanked her very much, as she kept them active, entertained and helped them a lot in their moments of solitude.
The objective public is a very important collective. We must move forward, working with them, offering them new opportunities.
For this “good practice” to be sustainable, inter alia:
Regarding implementation and costs, as I have already commented, both this and the rest of the projects that I have been implementing within the E. Active Program since 2017 have been and are being implemented by me, Community Technician of CEAS. Since I do not have an economic budget.
If you had a budget, you could reach out to more people for longer. Therefore, it would be interesting to have a budget for more professionals to be able to cover and work with more groups at the same time, for material and organisation of departures, meetings between groups, days of coexistence.
Such initiatives can easily be extrapolated to any other destination: Community, province, municipality, town… country… The most important condition to be able to take it to any geographical area is the DINAMISATION of the COLECTIVO of MAYOR PERSONS, encourage them, enthuse them and that they PARTICIPEN.
My conclusion, of the work that I have been doing with this collective is totally POSITIVE.
He is a very grateful collective, he works very well with them, usually they have very good willingness to deal with any subject that is posed to them.
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