Breaking Isolation | URBACT Network

As the summer arrives, it's a good moment to look back at what the first semester of the year 2024 brought in terms of European cooperation! And we start this recap with our Transnational Meeting in Município de Pombal in Portugal! The portuguese gathering was the occasion for the Breaking Isolation | URBACT Network to discover our visioning tools which included future writing (articles from the future) as well as mental time travelling in the future! It was also the occasion, for our 10 cities, to discover inspiring cases and practices from Pombal such as their walking group (but also gym and swimming) to break isolation which gathers around 100 people every week to exchange, chat, socialize while walking all together (and it's been successfully working for the last 20 years!). Why do people come? "To avoid being alone in front of tv at home" is the most common answer from participants.. Other initiatives such as the University of Seniors, Cercipom or the Inclusion training center for people with disabilities were also some of the interesting cases that Pombal has to avoid isolation of specific groups at risk. The Pombal TNM has also been the occasion to share 'isolation stories' gathered across our 1° European cities! And we've found them so striking that we're planning on creating a publication about it but we'll tell you more about this in the coming weeks ;) Finally, we could not leave Portugal without the emotional experience of fado music and singing which is also a way of bringing people together around a collective experience and sharing moment ❤️ What a fantastic way to end this portuguese Breaking Isolation Transnational Meeting! Thank you again for work put together by the amazing team of Município de Pombal Cláudia Costa Virginia Santos Pedro Carrana Liliana Domingues Catarina Silva

As you may know, or not, the World Health Organization has launched, a month ago, an international Commission to work on social isolation! This confirms the importance and relevance of the Breaking Isolation | URBACT Network and the work done (and still to be done) by our 10 cities in Europe in the next 2 years. We are looking forward to develop and test actions which help break isolation for those already isolated but also prevent social isolation from those at risk. And hopefully, we should be able to provide to the World Health Organization and in particular Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Chido Cleopatra Mpemba, Vivek Murthy and the commissioners, inspiring practices and promising cases we've found throughout Europe! And we already have identified a couple of them! To be soon discovered in the Baseline Study of the Breaking Isolation | URBACT Network, coming out in January 2024! So stay connected. Let's break isolation! #socialisolation #socialconnection #loneliness #lonelinessepidemic URBACT https://lnkd.in/eF7aBUyW

Wonder what is the Breaking Isolation URBACT network all about? Find more about it in this article by its Lead expert, Christophe Gouache: "Social isolation: a silent and nearly invisible epidemic that needs to be broken" https://lnkd.in/e9RqvT4e #socialisolation World Health Organization URBACT

We are about to finish the study visits of our 10 European cities of the URBACT Breaking Isolation Network! And... What a journey! Innovative practices to directly or indirectly fight social isolation are already identified in all cities! This confirms the value of transnational cooperation to stimulate peer-to-peer learning and public innovation in general. We will soon unveil innovative practices found throughout this first diagnosis journey, so... stay connected to know more! A baseline study will come out for Christmas ;) #socialisolation #citiescooperation #europe #EUcities #publicinnovation #peerlearning