Grandparenting as Resource to Enhance the Educational Adult Community

Research has shown that for many elderly people (or elderly couples), the birth of a grandchild brings changes in habits, behaviors, organization, and interests in daily life. Becoming grandparents allows them to develop and consolidate their educational and emotional experience, to engage with the enthusiasm and sometimes explosive vitality of their grandchildren, to rediscover the pleasure and meaning of a positive and constructive relationship, and to continue expressing creativity through play. Furthermore, grandparents are a fundamental support for modern families. However, they often feel unprepared to fulfill their educational role as grandparents. This situation, especially during social isolation and the daily reorganization due to the health emergency, required leveraging personal resources that were not always easily stimulated independently. The project aimed to enhance active aging and support the development of educational skills in adults (grandparents and others) by training their socio-educational and caregiving competencies. This was achieved by involving them in informal and innovative training paths to stimulate their creativity, lateral thinking, and to support the relationship with grandchildren.

Experiment with training courses with grandparents to make them fully aware and capable in their educational role; - Experimenting, in small communities, with the possibility that some of the trained grandparents can support families even if they are not members of the family; - ‘Certify’ the educational capacities of grandparents in support of single parents, families in economic difficulties and children's homes, trying to give active roles in society to adult pensioners and ‘grandparents’ in general; - Promote self-aggregation and peer tutoring among grandparents; - Enhancing the capacities of partner organisations and their operators to support training interventions with grandparents; - Strengthen the educational competences of adults over 65 and in any case adult grandparents; - To strengthen the skills of educators in working with and enhancing the resources of grandparents in terms of caregivers; - Stimulating a stable adult-child relationship; - Promoting active ageing of the elderly.

• Experiment with training paths for grandparents to make them fully aware and capable in their educational role. • Experiment in small communities with the possibility that some trained grandparents can support families even if they are not part of the family unit. • "Certify" the educational abilities of grandparents to support single parents, economically struggling families, and child care centers, aiming to give active roles in society to retired adults and grandparents in general. • Promote self-aggregation and peer tutoring among grandparents. • Improve the ability of partner organizations and their operators to support training interventions with grandparents. • Strengthen the educational skills of adults over 65 and grandparents in general. • Enhance educators' ability to work with and strengthen grandparents' resources as caregivers. • Stimulate a stable adult-child relationship. • Promote active aging among the elderly.

The project included the implementation of six macro-activities: • An analysis of good practices: This involved studying the most recent practices implemented in Europe, particularly in the involved countries, regarding grandparenting. The aim was to identify recommended practices to be implemented in the future and involve grandparents in caring activities and their training. • The creation of educational and training materials aimed at grandparents (and active elderly people) to play an active role in caregiving. The training material included the creation of video lessons (uploaded on the platform https://campusgeinnovaikigai.com/login/index.php?c=_great), an exercise book for specific activities to be carried out individually and with grandchildren, a self-assessment test of their grandparenting skills, and the development of a training model. • A toolkit for educators promoting grandparent training: ideas, tools, and guidelines to organize training moments (based on the results of the second activity) and operational guidelines to promote self-aggregation among grandparents. • A five-day European training session for operators/staff who organized the local workshop experiments. • A five-month experiment involving 150 grandparents using the developed materials, and a storybook with illustrated stories of situations and "best practices" to experiment with their grandchildren (particularly 3-10 years old). • Meetings among partners for coordinating and monitoring activities.