Eixample District | Ajuntament de Barcelona

Aware of this situation, the district has seven Spaces and Day Centres for the Elderly, offering a service to over 7,000 people. Places designed as spaces for contact and exchange, open to citizens’ initiatives. An opportunity provided by the district for the Elderly to receive training and information, to participate and show solidarity with others.

The Day Centres and Spaces for the Elderly are facilities which have had to transform in order to meet the new challenges of the elderly and which aim to promote active ageing, encouraging the participation of the elderly in the actions developed through volunteering and cooperation. They are facilities created to offer living spaces, open to the city.

The Spaces and Day Centres of the Eixample operate with a model based on the active participation of the elderly, who intervene right from the start in the design, management and development of almost all the activities that are carried out.

The Eixample District saw the need to support the elderly people volunteering in the Spaces, providing them with tools to aid their participation in the activities and even to go much further, converting them into driving forces of motivation for the rest of the users.

In an initial phase, work was carried out to raise the awareness of the users about the importance of self-managing the Space. The circuit of volunteers of the facility was strengthened in order to guarantee greater participation, and training days were designed which offered management tools to the volunteers.

After five years with this dynamics, it became clear that the face-to-face training model involved an excess effort by the volunteers in addition to the work that they were already carrying out in the Space. It was thus necessary to seek an alternative training space, a new motivating element. The answer was the creation of a Virtual Community capable of offering new opportunities for personal growth of the elderly involved in each Space as a volunteer.

In joint work with the Institute of Lifelong Learning of the University of Barcelona IL3-UB, the Services for People Office of the Eixample District analyzed the most suitable format for this Community in order to support the daily work of the volunteers.

It was detected that many of the good practices carried out in a Space could serve as inspiration for the other facilities. It was necessary to promote more and better networking between the Spaces and Day Centres with the aim of exchanging experiences and learning from good practices.

Likewise, it was essential to offer the volunteers new tools for their training adaptable to the true situation. It was necessary to think of a proposal which would present them with an attractive challenge and direct benefits for their work.
 

DEFINITION OF THE SKILLS PROFILE OF THE VOLUNTEER

A self-analysis exercise by the volunteers themselves identified the most useful skills for their daily work and, moreover, which of them had to be strengthened on a personal level.
 
Through group work sessions, coordinated by the District, with the participation of the facilitators and the educational support of the IL3-UB, the volunteers prioritized the skills in four main spheres: technical skills (for example, written and oral communication, organization and planning...); relational skills (empathy, active listening...); those in line with the characteristics of the Space (user orientation, commitment to the values and culture of the organization...), and others useful to promote the training of trainers in order to succeed in transmitting knowledge (teaching skills, creativity...).
 
With this snapshot of the skills profile of the volunteers, carried out by the volunteers themselves and guided by a self-diagnosis skills tool created in the framework of the project, each volunteer identified in which skills they considered themselves to be prepared and which required development and consolidation. This tool led to the design of various skills training actions.
 
COMMUNITY OF VOLUNTEERS
 
The Virtual Community arose to offer a permanent meeting and knowledge exchange space to volunteers in line with the empowerment, initiative and autonomy of action which had been worked on in a face-to-face manner.
 
The Community was designed by the Services for People team of the Eixample District with the IL3-UB and with the collaboration and validation of the end user. It was the first proposal of this type in the network of facilities for the elderly of the city of Barcelona, and although it initially represented a challenge for its users – many of whom were not familiar with the new technologies – it became a proposal which allowed them to come closer to the current digital communication languages.
 
One of its main objectives is to encourage collaboration between the Spaces, to aid the dissemination of the activities designed for each of the commissions of volunteers of the Spaces, to request opinions about the daily operation of the facility, to process requests for technical improvements with the authorities, or to offer a variety of resources necessary for the daily activity of the members and of the Space.
 
It is a platform which acts as a meeting point between the volunteers from the different Spaces of the Eixample network and, moreover, it has become a pool of resources for the development of their work in accordance with their needs.
 
RESOURCE BANK: KNOWLEDGE PILLS
 
One of the keys for the resources available to the volunteers being used and applied in their daily work was their design. After more traditional training experiences, a simple to consume training format was sought, with a high impact of the messages, capable of arousing the interest of the users for their skills training. 
 
Work was carried out in the format of knowledge pills with innovative proposals far from the traditional training format. For example, storytelling techniques were used; a comic was created which raised the need for a specific skill. A motivating element was sought: a comic which connected them to their childhood in this case, and which had a fun component capable of motivating the need to acquire new skills. The comic was accompanied by theoretical contents in relation to the skill being developed. The contents were prepared by experts on the subject and, then, group work was carried out on the experiences of each of the volunteers in relation to the pill via virtual encounters in a forum.
 
INNOVATIVE TRAINING DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA
 
To close the cycle of participation and training of the volunteers in accordance with the effort made by them, two training days were designed at the University of Barcelona with gamification and Lego Serious Play methodologies in order to promote the process of reflection on their projects in the Spaces and, moreover, the opportunities which opened up thanks to the skills acquired and/or consolidated. 
 
With an initial motivating conference, which allowed them to discover the role of the volunteer in other management spheres far from the Spaces, but with shared management goals and challenges, an unforgettable day for the volunteers began at the University: they had the opportunity to participate in innovative training activities in which they shared their experiences of the process and the impact that it was having on their Spaces. They moreover acquired new resources applicable to their daily activity. 
 
The proposal ended with a guided tour of the University in which it became clear that, thanks to their involvement and link with the project, they already formed part of the university community of the UB and, more importantly, they had been a key element in the strengthening of the Spaces and Day Centres for the Elderly of the Eixample District.