Active Aging and Inclusive Communities: Inter-Institutional Intervention in Portugal

Enhancing older citizens’ participation is a worthwhile aim in itself in a democratic country, but it is also the most effective means of promoting active aging. The actual involvement of older people in the social, cultural and political life of their communities represents the way to healthy and positive aging. This study refers to a research project on social intervention in relation to poverty and social exclusion among older people, the APSE 2 project “Aging, poverty and social exclusion: Institutional networks and integrated social and health intervention with older people.” https://apseclunl.wordpress.com/ In this ethnographic study, social intervention with older people was observed in a borough in Lisbon in Portugal. The data collected comprise observation and recordings of inter-institutional meetings, activities involving older people and interviews. Through a detailed ethnographic account (Atkinson et al. 2001), the main features of the intervention strategies with the older population are described. The article shows how the inter-institutional network in a borough of Lisbon promotes the social inclusion of the older people within the community. It describs the main features of the intervention with the older population and reports some examples of activities that have been particularly effective in bringing older people into the spot light and making them the protagonists of the cultural life of their city.