AGORAge: Ageing in a caring community

AGORAge is a Research Action project that promotes a process of social intervention, to encourage the inclusion in their neighbourhoods of older people who live in nursing homes and senior cohousing.

By levering on relationships and actions of mutual aid and support as a vehicle of reciprocal responsibility and social safeness (Gilbert, 2000, 2009), the focus will be on creating a sense of belonging to a neighbourhood, which seems to play a significant role in favouring psychological well-being. Therefore, emphasis will be placed on relationships as privileged channels for creating a community that is not only inclusive but also caring.

The project will be based on the role of senior citizens. This role will be the focus of the research phase, during which the topic of social safeness will be analyzed and discussed. The expected outcome is the co-creation of a toolkit containing theoretical information on the concept of social safeness, methodological indications to analyze what social safeness means and how it is created in the target community, and, finally, operational tools for generating a caring community.

Treviso, Itàlia (Didier Descouens)