Project „Third age“
The project „Third age“ built up the access to the older population, not just seeing it as an endangered populaton but also as a social potential. This has a lot bigger meaning if great professional experience and wisdom of the vital part of older population is considered. In the beginning we worked on creating a functional group made of vital old people ready to help the others. With the end of theoretical education, these people became more aware of their streghts and weaknesses, more compact and functional, informed about the way that the public administration works like and possibilites to ensure their resources in the public and private sector of their local community. With the end of the theoretical education, a first old-to-old self-help group was formed in the village of Kamenica. In the goal of their practical education, at first they helped in realization of our activites (systematic health examinations in 3 nearby villages), then we had planned mutual activities (exhibits, theatre plays, 8th of March celebrations, visiting the sick and immobile old people, humanitarian actions…), so that in the end they could initiate and lead their own project in which we were assisting (public surface decoration, public faucets restoration, setting up decorative fences, concrete jardinere reparation, picnic site equipping, bridge construction…).
Even though it was not planned at first during the project, an another group of 7 members was self-iniciatively formed in the village of Cerje. With the approval of the donors, we have also given support to this group. The group was initiated by an adventurous old woman who renewed the statue dedicated to the fallen wariors of WWII in the centre of the village, all by herself..
Erste Foundation from Vienna awarded “Third Age” with a prestige international award for Social Integration 2011 in Prague. We won an award in the competition of 1850 projects from 11 countries of central and southeast Europe.
After the award, the “self-help” concept has spread onto similar small mountain commmunities in Nakon Velebit/CRO and Carpathians/RO.
From now on, all of the activities and project will be displayed separately. Here you can see the gallery of the photos taken during the systematic health examinations.
Srpski