Results

Blended Friendship Training

Online Train-the-Trainer Programme

Best Practice Guide

The FRIEND Programme, is an experiential group learning programme designed for people over 65 who wish to improve their interpersonal skills, expand their social network and enhance existing relationships. This inclusive programme is open to people of both genders and combines the benefits of both online and face-to-face components to offer a flexible, accessible, convenient and engaging learning experience specifically designed for older users.

Course Features:

Inclusive and accessible approach: the programme is designed with the specific needs of people over 65 in mind, offering content and activities that respect their learning needs and preferences. In fact, the programme is developed on the basis of the results of scientific research and on the basis of micro-consultation groups conducted directly with people over 65, local training centres, professionals and volunteers who are involved in all phases of programme development. The combination of face-to-face sessions and online resources ensures that everyone can participate at their own convenience.
Group experience: participating in the FRIEND programme means becoming part of a learning community. Group activities foster social interaction, allowing participants to create new friendships and strengthen existing relationships.
Innovative Content: the programme integrates experience-based learning elements designed specifically to meet the needs of older people, combining theoretical foundations with practical activities. Theoretical lectures are alternated with meaningful tasks, which allow the concepts learnt to be put into practice through group sessions.
Cultural adaptability: the project partnership is testing the FRIEND programme with 160 people from five European countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Poland. It is accessible in 6 languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch and English). This allows us to adapt the content to five different countries and cultures, responding to political and social needs across Europe. This approach ensures that the course content is relevant and respectful of cultural diversity.

A training programme dedicated to professionals and volunteers who want to implement and replicate the FRIEND programme with their senior users. This programme aims to improve the competences and education of local trainers, improving the availability and quality of the FRIEND programme. It includes innovative methods to facilitate learning around busy schedules, using approaches such as active activities, design-thinking tools and the use of scenarios, among others. Trainees will gain new skills in organising and adapting the programme to their own places. The training programme for trainers is designed for the specific needs of professionals and volunteers, gathered through focus groups at the various stages of the development of the programme.

The Best Practice Guide support capacity building of local learning centres across Europe to implement the FRIEND blended programme in a sustainable way. In order to implement the FRIEND programme in a sustainable way, there are two major challenges for local learning centres: reaching older people at risk of isolation and financing the programme over a long period of time. This guide provide strategies for effectively reaching isolated older people, ensuring they can benefit from the FRIEND programme. The guide bring together the guidelines that complete the FRIEND toolkit and together provide all the tips, tricks, tools and programmes to have a lasting impact on older people in order to prevent or combat loneliness and promote their well-being. Two international World Café sessions were conducted involving staff of local learning centres from different departments, including communication, marketing and finance, seniors, trainers who have been involved in the FRIEND programme experimentation, students from different disciplines, in order to collect good practices and innovative ideas from them that are being elaborated and included in the guidelines.