Caring communities, caring neighborhoods and streets: everyone is talking about it. It is also the focus of the national congress Thuis in de wijk (At home in the neighborhood), which will take place on April 2 in Den Bosch. At the congress, you can learn about housing concepts where proximity, well-being and looking out for each other play a role, such as Stadsveteranen, collaborate living project De Binnenhaven and Hof van Leeuwesteyn. You can also hear more about ways to make your street more caring; care circles and love and suffering streets. There are also workshops focusing on inclusion and the perspective of older people with a migration background.
For example, Meno Tomatala and Jeanny Vreeswijk-Manusiwa of SOMNL (Samen voor Ouderen met een Migratieachtergrond in Nederland / Together for Older Adults with a Migration Background in the Netherlands) will show how a sense of community is taken for granted in various cultures. More than 40 municipalities in the Netherlands have Moluccan communities that have done nothing but care for each other since the 1950’s. The question these days is: how can this way of looking out for each other continue to exist?
Stichting Asha, a volunteer organisation of Surinamese Hindustanis in the municipality of Utrecht that has existed for 27 years, would like to preserve the network it has built up. The volunteers of this foundation participate in various activities in the city. They also look out for each other. From different neighborhoods in the city, elderly people come to community center Oasis to participate in activities of the foundation. There are various meeting projects. Radj Ramcharan takes you through his experiences and Jeanny Vreeswijk-Manusiwa of SOMNL leads the conversation
To what extent is Digital Inclusion a prerequisite for living longer at home in the caring neighborhood? Care organisation Saffier, where ENIEC members Elisabeth de Vries and Britta Muttray work, has been working with the municipality and welfare organisations in The Hague for several years to make both the elderly and caregivers more digitally inclusive. With success!
What does a dementia-friendly home and living environment look like? Woonzorg Nederland, Alzheimer Nederland and KAW have updated the Dementia Friendly Living toolkit. The toolkit provides tools for three target groups: (commercial) developers, complex managers and tenants. Anne de Boer of Alzheimer Nederland and Willemijn Souren of Woonzorg Nederland will tell you more. These are some of the various topics covered during this conference. It is intended for corporations, healthcare organisations, welfare organisations, municipality, architects, developers, senior citizen organisations, civic initiatives and so on.
The conference is an initiative of the ministries of VWS and VRO, Aedes, ActiZ, ZN. Daniëlle Harkes and ENIEC member Yvonne Witter have put together the substantive program.
Photo: Claudia Kamergorodski
