Innovation from Cáritas Coimbra promotes active citizenship at Volunteering Fair
On 17 April, the Innovation Department joined forces with the Volunteering sector to represent Cáritas Coimbra at the Volunteering Fair held at the University of Coimbra’s Polo III – Health Sciences Polo. The idea was to promote active citizenship through the integration of inclusion projects.
The Cáritas Coimbra stand was presented in a very interactive format, allowing visitors to interact with the prototypes of the projects and to pick up various free materials. They could, for example, take the activity books on digital health literacy, which were developed as part of the IDEAHL project; take several flyers with tips on health, well-being and digital inclusion (from the ValueCare and IDEAHL projects); use the tablets provided, with the Sentab app from the Pharaon project installed for testing; get in touch with the technological devices from the AGAPE project, which enable daily lifestyle monitoring; and interact with the devices from the AAL4All project, which were tested in the pilot phase with users of Cáritas Coimbra in favour of smart homes as an alternative to assisted living to improve the quality of life of older people and their caregivers.
The audience was very enthusiastic about Cáritas Coimbra’s innovation, showing an interest in participating in the future activities of the organisation’s projects as volunteer members. This will be an opportunity to enrich themselves with field experience and further the study of the projects.
The ValueCare, Pharaon and IDEAHL projects received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme – ValueCare Project ‘Value-Based Methodology for Integrated Care Supported by ICT’, under grant agreement no. 875215; Pharaon Project ‘Pilots for Healthy and Active Ageing’, under grant agreement no. 857188; and IDEAHL Project ‘Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living’, under grant agreement no. 101057477. The AAL4All and AGAPE ‘Active aGeing And Personalised service’s Ecosystem’ projects are both co-funded by the European AAL (Active Assisted Living) Programme and, in the Portuguese case, by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).
