!! Launch of the Thematic Network on Innovation for Age-Friendly Environments

AFE INNOVNET-Logo FINAL

Last May 2013, AGE submitted a project proposal to the European Commission to set up a Thematic Network on Innovation for Age-Friendly Environments (AFE-INNOVNET). After a long selection and negociation process, we are pleased to announce that the project is officially launched since 1st February. This project is funded by the CIP ICT Programme (Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme on Information and Communication Technologies) and will run for two years.

The overarching goal of this thematic network is to support the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing – notably the D4 Action Group, by setting up a large EU wide community of local and regional authorities and other relevant stakeholders across the EU who want to work together to find smart and innovative evidence based solutions to support active and healthy ageing and develop age-friendly environments across the EU. The AFE-INNOVNET consortium and supporting partners have joined forces to:

  • mobilise a wide range of local and regional authorities and other stakeholders – industries, including SMEs, research centre/universities, civil society organizations – to link up, benefit from each other’s experience and work together to promote initiatives on age-friendly environments across the EU;
  • develop methodologies to help Local and regional authorities assess the socioeconomic impact of age-friendly environments and the benefits of involving older people in the co-production of age-friendly environments solutions;
  • develop a repository of notable and replicable practices in innovative ICT and services solutions with associated socio-economic evidence;
  • facilitate pilot projects clustering to stimulate local/regional investment in ICT and services innovation and thus local/regional economic activity (with a focus on SMEs);
  • facilitate public access to research/expertise and generic methodologies in the field of age-friendly environments;
  • ensure convergence and strong coordination with WHO Age-Friendly Cities and Healthy Cities initiatives;
  • facilitate information sharing between all interested stakeholders in the field of age-friendly environments;
  • launch an EU Covenant on Demographic Change to create the necessary political and technical framework to bring together in a more formal and long-term structure local and regional authorities – and other stakeholders – across the EU who want to cooperate and implement smart and innovative evidence based solutions. The proposed Covenant will be inspired by the existing Covenant on sustainable energy.

All in all, the thematic network will support and enhance the operational implementation of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, D4 Action Group’s work plan.
The consortium is composed of 29 partners, representing 16 EU countries. Among them we count 13 cities and 6 regions.

The coordination is managed by AGE with the support of CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions), PAU Education (Communication), TNO (Dutch Research Center), the University of Valencia as work package leaders. The project will also work in close cooperation with WHO Europe who doing some technical work to support our thematic network (work coordinated by Manfred Huber).

For more information, do not hesitate to visit the website of the project: www.afeinnovnet.eu

For more information, do not hesitate to contact Julia Wadoux, Julia.wadoux@age-platform.eu

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