The Elderly Never Lonely Project is a Civil Society action under the PHARE Programme comprising partners from Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and Malta. The Maltese partner is The Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs (Malta).

The action is aimed at strengthening organisational and managerial capacities of Bulgarian and Romanian CSOs operating with elderly people with specific needs for care and creating a network among EU and extra-EU CSOs. The direct target group of the project is represented by social workers operating in CSOs dealing with elderly people with specific need for care. The elderly, then, are the indirect target group of the project. In Romania and Bulgaria, NGOs and Social Centres of Churches organise services for elders, but in comparison with needs, these are reduced as coverage and number of beneficiaries, because of the limited financial resources. The best way to improve this situation is to help those organisations to develop a wider system which could involve a greater number of people.

Throughout the implementation of the project, European know-how in the field of elderly care will be passed on to Romanian and Bulgarian CSOs. During the implementation of the seminars and training activities, CSOs social workers will be dealing with issues like networking and building of partnerships among organisations, promoting organisational visibility, fundraising and grant proposals for securing funds, improvement of managerial and organisational skills through the implementation of specific programs.

Each partner will conduct a survey in its own country. The survey will seek to clarify the situation of elderly people services in each Member State. The research will point out how many elderly people need specific support, which are the most significant services offered by the government, how do they work, which NGOs are operating in this field and what is the level of the people who work in the associations offering services to elderly.  The project started in January 2006 and will last until October 2007. For further details regarding this project please visit www.elderlyneverlonely.eu

The creation of a network among Bulgarian, Romanian and EU Civil Society Organisations working with the elderly will represent a situation of continuity in the project results. The network, as a matter of fact, will be operating long after the end of the project and will be always open to include new members willing to share their expertise and increase their competence exchanging know how between EU and extra-EU CSOs.