Social inclusion of older people through volunteering in Estonia, Latvia and Finland

The project ‘Let us be active!’ aims at decreasing social exclusion and loneliness among older people in Estonia, Finland and Latvia through involving them in voluntary work. The problem is accurate as the population of people in retirement age is growing and loneliness influences negatively their overall health and wellbeing. The idea is to develop a programme that will allow older people to stay active and participate in their communities by doing voluntary work.

The project will analyse existing activities available for seniors, examine their needs in the area of volunteering and produce guidelines for social and health care workers to promote and support voluntarism of the older people. Workshops, meetings and events for seniors, health care workers and social workers will be organized to develop the new form of voluntary activities. At the same time, the information platform in each city will be established and is to be managed by seniors themselves. The experts from the World Health Organization support the project implementation.

As a result of the project social inclusion of older people is expected to improve. The project activities will contribute to the improvement of the health and well-being of older people and their communities. It is expected that at least 100 older people and their families in every municipality will be influenced by the results of the project. Ultimately, the project will strengthen and support the resilience of the communities in the Baltic Sea Region, contributing to the programme’s objective.