Intergenerational Learning in Europe – Policies, Programmes ...

5. The EAGLE Toolkit for Intergenerational Activitiesbehave and approach schools. Time spent in preparationis rarely wasted and often the secret of success. It is essentialto organise preparation for all participants involved asmutual understanding and respect is a pre-requisite to asuccessful activity.If you are going to work with individuals or groups ofpeople you need to think about how you are going to getthem ready to take part as effectively and satisfyingly aspossible. If you were going to bring a group of young andold people together you would might want to spend timewith them separately first to prepare them for meeting together.As well as obvious things such as listening to eachother it might be helpful to talk to people about what theyexpect of the other group and how they think they mightbehave towards each other.It I also important to get people to think about boundariesand how they need to keep themselves safe and notoffend anyone else. It is essential that both groups respectthe other’s views, listening even if they disagree.Implementation & Management4.This is the stage where you translate your plansinto activity. Thetime you spent onplanning and engagementwill be a major contributorto the success of theactual programme. Do not beafraid of being flexible at thisstage as you start the piece of work. Continue to listento people, respond to their ideas and opinions and makesure from the beginning that everyone feels they havea part in whatever activity or activities are taking place.Intergenerational work is about participation and mutualrespect. Doing together and not doing to.Μonitoring & Evaluation5.When you developed your project you will havehad an idea about the pathway, or stages, youexpected the project to follow. Regular monitoringwill enable you to see if the project is on track and ifnot give you the chance to take any necessary steps to addressany problems or arise. Equally there may have beenthings that happened unexpectedly that may show a betterway to do things and these need to be identified andacted upon.If you are to demonstrate the quality of your programmewe need to be able to demonstrate what has changed becauseof our work. Going back to the outcomes proposedin the original plan for this project think about how youwill measure or assess if they have been achieved? Howwill you go about evaluating or measuring the success ofyour programmes? Examples of evidence can include:• Participants feedback sheet;• Recorded evidence & statistics;• Produced materials/objects;• Monitoring Reports;• Questionnaires;• Evaluation Reports;• End of Programme Report;• Data/Evidence Collected;• Case Studies.In some settings and countries it may be possible to developpartnerships with Universities and teaching institutionsfor students to undertake evaluation studies as partof their academic course.20