The project addresses the growing difficulty for people over the age of 60 to adapt to life after retirement in an ageing Europe. While policies often encourage people to remain in the workforce for longer, this is not always possible or desirable and can leave older people feeling excluded or that they no longer have a purpose in life. At the same time, volunteering declines with age despite the significant needs of the NGO sector, leading to an underutilisation of the valuable experience and skills of older people. Many existing initiatives focus primarily on personal leisure activities, which often fail to provide a strong sense of social belonging or usefulness.

Social Shift aims to shift the mindset of retirees from career-focused goals to active social and civic engagement. Through a dedicated methodology and practical tools, it encourages older people to use their knowledge and experience to help others and strengthen communities, thereby improving well-being and preventing social exclusion.

The main objectives of the project are:

• To bring about a change in the way individuals perceive their own abilities: moving from a personal career to a commitment to the community.
• To prevent problems associated with the retirement of active and experienced individuals.
• To provide educators working with young retirees or potential future retirees with the tools they need to shift from egocentric to socio-centric thinking.

• Timan s.r.o (Slovakia)
• I.E.R.F.O.P ONLUS (Italy)
• Association M3Cube (France)
• Fundacja Rozwoju Aktywnosci Miedzynarodowej I Edukacyjnej – FRAME (Poland)
• TERRA Foundation – Training, Education, Research, Resilience for all (Bulgaria)

• A service-oriented self-learning methodology and a paradigm shift from thinking about one’s own career to thinking about the joy of helping others.
• A self-learning toolkit to fully understand and assimilate the need to use one’s own knowledge and skills for the benefit of others.
• A testing methodology of the tools developed in an international environment to demonstrate the transnational value of the philosophy underlying the project.
• A catalogue of good practices to demonstrate the relevance of the methodology followed in the project and to present concrete examples of people who have benefited from a change in approach to their own role in life by putting their experience and knowledge at the service of others.
• Advices for preventing rejection and exclusion from the community when individuals leave the labour market.