About the project
Together Old and Young - TOY: young children and senior citizens learning and developing in intergenerational community spaces.
The purpose of the TOY Project is to create new possibilities for senior citizens and young children to learn and have fun together. We believe that this is more important than ever before in Europe.
People are living longer but old people and young children are having less and less contact with each other. Parents and young grandchildren are migrating to cities and countries far away from grandparents. For many grandparents, it is also sometimes difficult to keep in touch with grandchildren. Other reasons for the lack of contact between old and young is that often senior citizens are living in aged care facilities where they rarely see children and many young children are spending their days with their own age group in day care centres, pre-schools and schools. Social and economic solidarity between generations, one of the key factors for a future strong Europe, will only happen if the various generations have the opportunity to do things together and understand and value each other.
The TOY project is researching how older people (over 55 years) and young children (8 years and younger) benefit by learning with each other and from each other – in other words ‘intergenerational learning involving old and young’. We believe that this intergenerational learning can happen in different kinds of places in the community such as for example,: a local library, a community culture and arts centre, in a day care centre or a garden or outdoor playground.
The TOY Project also aims to uncover successful approaches when organizing activities bringing together senior citizens and young children and the kinds of skills and resources that are needed. These are being compiled in an illustrated booklet and a Training Tool Kit. All the learning gained during these phases of TOY are being put into practice in community-based initiatives in ‘Nature and Outdoor Learning’ and in ‘Arts, Culture and Creativity’, which will be organized during the last five months of the project.
Different kinds of organizations in Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain are involved in TOY. A big advantage of the project is that it brings together knowledge and experience from the worlds of older care and active ageing, senior volunteering, early childhood care and education and community development.
TOY is funded by the European Commission as part of the Grundtvig Lifelong Learning Programme. TOY started in November 2012 and will continue until October 2014 culminating in an International TOY Conference which will take place on 28 October 2014 in the Child Rights Home of the Netherlands, Leiden.
Our hope is that by the end of the project more people across Europe will know more about the importance of intergenerational practice involving senior citizens and young children. They will also have the skills to organize more intergenerational learning initiatives in their own neighbourhoods.
Together Old and Young will build age-friendly communities.
Documents about project TOY. We participate in case study and in the educational seminar.