University of Ruse “Angel Kanchev”, Ruse (Rousse), Bulgaria

NGO “Vecmāmiņas.lv”(Grannies.lv) was established in the year 2011 with the aim to unite active seniors and carry out educational work in the field of adult non-formal education, thus motivating senior persons to become active citizens and get involved in lifelong learning activities.

The organization Grannies.lv offers its members a meeting platform for sharing the knowledge and skills about healthy life style, improvement of social and communication skills.

The aim of organization is to improve the professional skills of its members and trainers and learn new skills regarding non-formal education, but also to share the knowledge with various target group, especially with seniors.

NGO promotes healthy life style, active citizenship, integration and voluntarism.

The NGO has participated in a local project “Wise trainers” supported by Riga City Welfare department where 10 of our trainers shared the lifelong experiences in several practical aspects to day-care center clients – the young generation. “Grannies.lv” trainers regularly continue to attend various workshops, seminars, and raise their competence level in issues like integration, communication and PR skills, entrepreneurship skills, volunteer work, IT skills. The NGO uap to now has participated in life-long education area only on local level, but we would like to broaden our activities and get involved in international projects, in order to acquire the experience of other European countries in non-formal education.

Grannies.lv has been a partner organization in Nordplus project “Senior motivation to learn” and also we have been sending our adult trainers to Erasmus+ KA 1 mobility activities, trainings for the last 3 years.

Activities:

1. Voluntary work: Voluntary work promotes elder people active and healthy style. The project activities give people more energy, positive thinking and makes life enjoyable.

2. To improve their knowledge in communication and voluntary work.

Key persons involved in this project are  Pučuka Ināra and Rita Liepiņa, experts in adult education. They have proved their abilities working with seniors in different non-formal learning programmes (healthy life style, encouraging active citizenship, voluntarism.