Click against unwanted loneliness (2023)
IP: Renée DePalma
Other members of the research team: María Barba Núñez, Antía Domínguez Rodríguez, Isabel María Martínez Carillo
Collaborating organisation: Fundación Esplai Cidadanía Comprometida
Funding body: Xunta de Galicia
Amount of funding: as per the agreement between Esplai and the UDC
In early 2023, a collaboration was established between the Esplai Foundation for Committed Citizenship, which has been working for the social inclusion of vulnerable groups since 1999, and the ECIGAL research group from the University of A Coruña, which is dedicated to promoting and researching Education for Global Citizenship (ECG) and other critical and transformative forms of education.
As part of the project funded by the Xunta de Galicia, “Clic against unwanted loneliness”, Fundación Esplai engages with ECG to carry out research based on participatory principles. With older people, we explored how to create informal support networks through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a way of preventing and tackling unwanted loneliness, a particularly worrying trend among people in this age group.
We wanted to place older people at the centre of this research, not only to take their demands into account, but by allowing them to participate in decision-making during the investigation process, as well as in the design of actions to be reflected in a final document. It was essential for this project to create spaces for debate on these issues, involving older people and social stakeholders, for which we created an advisory group that accompanied us throughout the research.
The results are published on the Esplai website, and a Galician version of the report is also available.
Publications
Report “Click against unwanted loneliness“. Edited by the Esplai Foundation