B.C. Ministry of Heath - Selected Meadows School Project

The B.C. Ministry of Health has selected the Meadows School Project to be showcased in their Case Studies of Community Actions in Active Aging report. This report will be shared with municipalities, health authorities, seniors' organizations, and other agencies involved with older people in British Columbia. In addition, building on the Meadows School Project, the Ministry has partnered with the British Columbia Care Providers Association to develop a toolkit for educators and service providers to use to promote age-friendly communities through intergenerational connections.

The reason the Ministry of Health is funding the development of the intergenerational toolkit is to support the development of age-friendly communities. This is part of a larger WHO and Canadian initiative in which BC is one of the main partners. You can find more information about it - www.seniorsincommunities.ca

The toolkit will be one of BC's deliverable for supporting one of the eight key features of an age-friendly community identified in the WHO Cities and the Canadian Rural/Remote Age-friendly Guides. The feature that the toolkit will support is "Opportunities for social participation in leisure, social, cultural and spiritual activities with people of all ages and cultures". So, as noted in the age-friendly website, the toolkit will be actually be supporting key feature #4 which addresses social participation.

WHO and our other Canadian partners are aware that BC is taking a leading role in supporting age-friendly communities. We will be providing more details about our age-friendly involvement in our Active Aging Plan which we hope will be launched this summer.

Active Aging Symposium 2008

www.BCactiveaging.ca

Celebration and showcase for many of the excellent active aging and age friendly projects underway across BC