A closing event in the frame of GrandExperts project took place on 19 November 2019 at Sofia Innovation Lab kindly hosted by Sofia Development Association. We know quite well that older people want and are able to continue to learn and share with others what they know and are skilful. Older experts from Dolni and Gorni Vadin, Sofia and Trud village took part in the event together with specialists in the field of education and guests. Miroslava Georgieva, coordinator and a trainer in the programme, presented the aims and the activities. She told about the partner organisations from Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Poland and the working meeting in these countries. She also presented some of the experts from the other countries and their themes.
The most interesting part of the meeting was the presentation of the older experts from Bulgaria and their themes. Each one of them received a certificate for a successful completion of an author’s training module presented on the on-line platform. The developed modules are on a few main areas – gardening, arts and crafts, health, children and culinary. All these are illustrated with pictures and videos taken by the older experts. The experts shared their impressions from the trainings and the actual work on the modules, the support they have received by colleagues at the local community clubs and the trainer Miroslava Georgieva. Maria Petkova, director of Tulip Foundation, gave certificates to the representatives of Saznanie – 1927 Chitalishte Dolni Vadin village and Svetlina 1929 Chitalishte Trud village – organisations that have been actively involved in the planning and logistics of the trainings as well as the follow up support for the local experts. She expressed gratitude to the testers – the people who read the developed modules on the platform and gave their valuable feedback to the authors.
For two years we worked with our partners from ILI at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Senioren-Organisationen e.V. from Germany, Dublin City University from Ireland, Foundation for Women's Issues (FJK) from Poland and Art-Age from the Netherlands. Together we developed training modules for older people who believe they are experts in certain field and would like to share their experience by developing their own online courses.
Since the beginning of the year more than 70 people from different parts of the country participated in series of meetings, face-to-face and online trainings for development of an online content. Out of these 16 people developed their own online courses on different themes. According to one’s interests everyone can follow the created modules in Bulgarian language.
The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the EU.
