Present: Maria Storsbergen, Johan Riemersma, Gerbert Rebel, Ridie Vos, Berti Linschoten, Lenie Nebbeling, Isabel Terpstra, Henri Braakenburg.

(Further) Introduction of the participants: Gerbert is involved in a meeting place for the elderly, called: “Het Trefpunt” and is a member of the client council of a care home for the elderly “de Lichtenberg”.
Berti: founded “het Trefpunt”.
Johan is pre-pensioner and member of the inner-city inhabitants network Amersfoort . Maria is active in the Ecovilla-project (ecologically sustainable housing) and housing for the elderly. She invited her neighbour Willem Kroonder to present in this meeting the project Akropolis. Ridie is involved in healthcare and housing for the elderly.

The agenda for this meeting is discussed and finalized: Presentation by Willem Kroonder- Reports from Finland and Hungary – Visit to Finland – The web-site – The chairperson – The coordinator between study group and Henri/ the other groups.

Willem Kroonder presented the Akropolis-project. This housing for the elderly  formula is successfully implemented in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in a number of housing complexes. Such a complex is in principle open for everybody; the homes can be cheap or expensive, privately owned or rented. In the complex are shops, restaurants, a hairdresser et cetera. There is even a children daycare centre for the employees in the complex. Admittance is such that a third of the inhabitants do not need any (health) care, a third needs only minimal care, and a third needs more to even substantial professional (health) care. All homes are well accessible for wheelchairs and even brancards. Willem is member of a group of people (“Friends of Akropolis”), who try to realize an Akropolis complex in Amersfoort. On their invitation a number of members of the town-council of Amersfoort visited Akropolis Rotterdam, and were after that visit enthusiastic about such a project. They are instrumental in realising such a project in Amersfoort, but until now no suitable terrain has been found.  The “Friends of Akropolis” are now in the process of further discussing the project with the Municipality and housing societies and developing a more substantive proposal for the town-council.

Reports from Finland and Hungary: no comments.

The web-site was shown in its current state. Next step is the provision of a user id and a password for:  www.futeurope.eu

The chairperson will rotate; next meeting Ridie. Coordinator are Ridie en Isabel, as a duo.
Visit to Finland is 10 to 13 June this year. Maria, Ridie, Isabel and Lenie will participate. To prepare this visit we will further discuss what questions we like to ask them and what information about the Dutch situation we want to gather to share with the Finnish group. Next meeting this topic and further discussions about housing for the elderly and healthcare.

Next meetings 26th of March and 9th April

ANNEX:

Amersfoort Futeurope studygroup, February 13, Bergkerk. Discussion points Ridie Vos
 
Information about housing for seniors.
 
Definitions     - housing-conditions: both physical and social
                - senior people:    third term of life  - 50/55 to 75 years of age
                                          fourth term of life  - aged 75 years and above.
 
Some influences upon housing demands and conditions for seniors:
- critical life-events (loss of partner, health problems, retiring)
- health condition (need for healthcare)
- situational characteristics (quality of the neighbourhood, care support both intra- and extramural)
- age cohort characteristics (for instance ratio all seniors < - > seniors requiring support)
- housing: privately owned – rented; rented: profit and non profit (subsidised) sector.
 
In general seniors prefer to live among a mixed (varied) neighbourhood population.
 
Responsibility for housing-conditions for the senior people is with: municipality, professional care providers, non profit housing associations, commercial housing project developers.
 
Expectations for the future:
- dedicated areas for senior-houses; residential quarters with community healthcare and services on demand
- community housing for seniors
- increasing number of lifetime-lasting (durable) houses with a high standard of support
- increasing use of domotica; in-house electronic support systems

Journalist Riikka Klemola

The Futeurope- study project started

A new international learning partnership-project was started yesterday at the Adult Education Centre. Almost twenty seniors interested in international contacts took part in planning and information meeting. The purpose of the two years project is to change ideas and experiences of the ways of living of seniors in different parts of Europe.

The project will be carried out by study-circle and in small groups. In practice connections will take place so that the groups in partnership-countries will make compositions about the themes. The compositions will be translated into English and sent either by e-mail or by CDs. The groups will comment on the reports and have discussions on the interesting themes.
During the project the participants will also visit the participating countries; Hungary, Great Britain and the Netherlands. We hope to get Romania and Lithuania to participate the project, too. They however had problems with national funding.
The first project visit will take place in Finland, Kiuruvesi in June 2008 and in October we will meet in Hungary. Great Britain will be visited in March and the Netherlands in summer 2009. The principal of the Adult Education Centre Leena Penttinen underlines that no special tricks are needed; we have natural exotic of our own. We’ve experienced it before.
- For instance people from cities had never seen the star clear sky and walking on the ice was a wonderful experience to them. They were also surprised to see how well the infrastructure worked or for instance how Kuorevirta sports area is organized.

Computer skills important

During the first meeting you could feel how unprejudiced, curious and eager the atmosphere was. Many participants wanted to develop their language skills and those recently retired were interested in learning what retired people do in other countries. – Personal contacts with people of the same age interest me, Mrs Saara Kastari grounded her attendance.
The biggest worries expressed by the participants were computer skills and electronic media skills. Mrs Leena Penttinen reminded that the aim of the group is to work as a team helping each other.
The participants consisted of experienced net experts and also those who were not aware of the secrets of the skills. Mrs Penttinen encouraged the group members to take part in the computer courses offered by the Adult Education Centre. – The computer boom is not yet IN here for some reason. Elsewhere courses are full while in our Centre you can nearly enjoy private teaching. Mrs Penttinen emphasized the importance of computer skills among senior citizens because in the future, more and more services are in the electric form.
It would be easier if you learn these skills before that.

Changing thoughts and experiences

The main object of the project is to encourage people living in different parts of Europe to exchange their thoughts and to think how they could affect the future of Europe. We have planned for example that one of the main themes of cooperation is living; now and in the future. There are differences in living; for instance in Hungary parents in most cases live with their children. Other themes which we exchange thoughts between elderly people are; voluntary and paid work, politics and solidarity between different age groups. Also religion was suggested to be one of the themes.
 - Leena Huttunen who took part in LIVE- the former international project of the Kiuruvesi Adult Education Centre, was very enthusiastic in the project. “I have always been interested in languages and talk more than understands. I’ve visited foreign countries because my daughter is living in Switzerland and my son in Moscow.” In the course of LIVE-project she had a visit to Barcelona. Meeting foreign people has been very useful. Have courage, Leena Huttunen advices participants.
The Futeurope-study circle project is financed by EU, Sokrates-Grundtvig Lifelong learning-programme. The study circle group will meet first time in the middle of January.        

The text for the photo:
The retired teacher Mrs Marjatta Ryan got interested in the Futeurope-study circle because while teaching she liked very much to arrange the international e-mail correspondence of the pupils. She is also interested in what the retired people do and how they get along in other countries. 

Kiuruvesi, 16 January 2008.

Happy This Year 2008!
Thank you Henri for your nice e-mail and the story of St. Nicholas, at our
Independence Day! I hope you and your companions are feeling well, still after
Christmas!

It has been very busy time the last month, yesterday we finally translated in
English (in some way) the Kiuruvesi- newspaper text about our first,
informative meeting in December.Yesterday we had the proper first study circle
(with 13 participants) where we actually repeated our plans which we have in
the Minutes in Amersfoort and we read your e-mail. We also translated the
newspaper text. In near future I’ll send more photoes (from
Amersfoort in Nov.) packed by WinZip-program.

All participants still were as eager as at the first time. The group is ideal
in size, now. It can change a little, but now there are also two active men
besides eleven women. As usual, the seniors are very busy; their only free time
was Monday mornings from 9 to 11, when we now will have our study circle in the library room at our centre! We planned next Monday meeting everyone to
introduce oneself in English and we’ll take a photo or a videofilm to send it
to all Futeurope-study circle mates.

Zsuzanna surprised me cheafully today by calling from Hungary. She wanted to
make sure the date of our next meeting in Kiuruvesi (the 10-13 of June) and the
nearest airport (Kuopio). Finnair fligts many times every day to/from Amsterdam, too, but allways via Helsinki from/to Kuopio. Their flights are often the cheapest, at least if you buy tickets in Finland in Internet.

I and all our group wishes all Futureurope-friends very welcome to us in June!

Our best regards to all our old and new friends!

Leena.

The group had its first meeting on January 25 (on Friday) at Életfa Association’s office at 3 pm. 10 people gathered at the meeting, besides the president of Életfa Association and the project manager. Only one pensioner couldn’t come, because she is still a part-time worker and the appointment was not appropriate for her.

The procession of the meeting:

1. First the participants introduced themselves briefly. The composition of the group was very diverse: pedagogues, cultural managers, doctors, printing employees, etc. Some of them are pensioners for a few month, others are for more then 10 years. All participants are over 55.

2. Péter Giczey gave a power point lecture on the history, strategy, activities and programs of Életfa Association.

3. Zsuzsanna Kánya-Ábrahám gave a power point lecture on the aims, the length and activities of the Gruntvig project. (We already had met severally with the pensioners before this first meeting).

4. Comment on the presentations:
- How important life long learning process, continuous renewal of the knowledge is, because this knowledge become obsolete soon.
- It would be important for the pensionary to train themselves, but this is not a caracteristic process in Hungary.
- The lack of command of foreign language is a huge problem for the Hungarian pensionary, they had the possibility to learn only Russian.

5. Brain-storming: what topics would be interesting to discuss at the next study circle? The following themes were raised: health care, decreasing amount of births, demographic index, health and lifestyle, sporting habits of pensioners, community events for pensioners – community of the pensioners.

6. One topic has been chosen: healthcare and healthy lifestyle, which will be discussed at the next study circle that will take place on 21 February (Thursday).

7. At the next meeting 2-3 participants will hold a keynote speech on the subject of health care and healthy lifestyle in a few minutes.
8. At the following meeting we can get to know the reports and experiences of study circles in other countries, and we will discuss them.

9. The first report is presented by the project manager, but at the next meeting the report will be made by the participants. The pensioners will choose responsibles among them for reporting.

The study circle meeting ended at 4.45 pm.

The group had its first meeting on January 16 in a local church, called the Bergkerk. The meeting was attended by 10 people, 3 persons had sent their apologies – they hope to join in next time.

After some general information had been given on the Futeurope project, the participants briefly introduced themselves: who they are, why they wanted to join Futeurope. For some it was because of previous travel experiences, others indicated that they were just curious getting to know more about people living in other parts of Europe. All participants are over 55.

In Amersfoort the study circle is a joint project of Stichting Educatieve Projecten (a foundation for educational projects for mature people) and the Seniorentrefpunt Amerberg, a senior citizens’ club called Amerberg (you should know that Amersfoort is very proud of its ‘berg’ or mountain, which actually is just a hill of 45 meters high!).

There was some confusion about the essentials of the study circle approach: the idea that the group should for the larger part run its own affairs was new to some of the participants. It was therefore agreed that the coordinator will be in the group one more meeting. Then the group should make final arrangements on the chairing of meetings, the reporting and communication. 
 
All but one participant have access to a PC and internet. This will help them to collect information on subjects via Google or specific websites such as www.europe.eu Other sources of information would be the local library, newspapers, radio and tv-broadcasts. Another option is to invite a ‘speaker’ on a specific item or theme.

The website was seen as a good way of exchanging reports and sharing other information with the other study circles abroad. It will also allow participants to easily communicate with eachother, since there will also be a local page available on the website. It was therefore hoped that the website www.futeurope.eu will be ready shortly.

The group had a long discussion on the study circle themes that had been selected by the project coordinators in their November Amersfoort meeting. Finally it was decided that no theme should be excluded, but that it might be best to just follow the selection and start with the very first theme ‘housing’. This would also allow making a direct link to the local situation, since ‘housing for seniors’ is a rather hot item in Amersfoort right now.  

No decision has yet been made concerning the visit to Kiuruvesi this summer. This will be one of the items that will be discussed in the next meeting, which has been scheduled for February 13.

Meanwhile the report from the Kiuruvesi study circle and their group picture will be sent to all Amersfoort participants. 

HB - 280108