LEARNING

To realise Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE), it is essential to know WHAT SHAFE IS and HOW TO DO IT.

How to align information and communication technologies (ICT) with the built and social environment? How to include user-friendly design, how to adapt places and homes or how to advocate your interest in your community?

WHAT SHAFE IS, is further explained in a webinar that was held in February 2021.

HOW to realise SHAFE is the aim of the SHAFE Foundation: to design and build SHAFE at different locations in the EU, to showcase what SHAFE is, to investigate the benefits, and to demonstrate how it can be done.

Learning SHAFE is also subject of several Erasmus+ projects, where the SHAFE founders participate in:

“Hands-on SHAFE” delivers informal online training packages to improve the skills of people of all ages to choose and implement SHAFE in their own homes or neighbourhoods. In Hands-on SHAFE you will find modules for SMART (mobile and smart home), HEALTHY (prevention and dealing with diseases), and BUILT (physical indoor and outdoor environments).

Educational game BIG “Building Inclusive environments for all Generations” delivers SHAFE learning in an online game. The player can meet and solve the challenges of characters during the play, such as inaccessible housing for a wheelchair, loading goods in a car while taking care of a child, or visiting a restaurant with impaired sight. The project will also develop a workshop methodology to use the game in joint training settings.

The “Bridge the Gap!” project focuses on social and digital participation of older people. It provides training methodologies to train older people to create and improve their own living environments with the support of digital tools.  

The DESIRE project provides professionals in the building industry, as well as furniture and home furnishings sector, with the tools and skills to apply Design4All methods. This is an integral part of the design process. Design4All aims to create or adapt age-friendly housing as a solution for the well-being, comfort and autonomy of older adults or people in situation of dependency at home.