Nineteen partner institutions from eight countries around the Baltic Sea launched this project: Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Great Britain, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden.
With demographic change - recently defined as one of the four key challenges for European regions by the EC - and the current economic crisis looming, the cities and regions of the BSR have to find creative ways of disclosing and utilizing unused opportunities.
One of these hidden potentials are people in the prime of their lives – the so called “Best Agers” (defined in the project as people aged 55 and older).
As previous projects have shown, the population of the Baltic Sea Region will rapidly become older and the 55+ age groups will experience large growth rates in the near future. The result will be a pool of older professionals who are healthier than ever, well-educated and motivated and who can be mobilised to counteract the negative effects of demographic change –shrinking regional workforces and the socalled "brain drain". The project will survey successful approaches and goodpractice examples, develop them further and transfer them to the partner regions with low-key Best Ager involvement.
Part of the project are also conferences and events, press releases, a website and a Facebook page, a Webinar-sequence for business planning and a newsletter. A special Mentor Programme in Denmark has already educated more that 80 mentors for young employees.
More information on the project and activities: www.best-agers-project.eu | Facebook page of Best Agers

The film "Alltagshelden" (Everyday heroes) has been awarded twice at the International Film and Video Festival "World Media Festival" in May 2011 in Hamburg. "Alltagshelden" won the price in the category "Education", as well as the Intermedia-globe Gold Award.
The festival involved over 300 respondents (production companies, agencies and clients) from 35 countries, including big names such as ARTE, ORF, University of Tokyo and NATO Headquarters.
The film "Alltagshelden" was produced on behalf of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV) and is the dominant part of the campaign "Jugend will sich erleben" (Youth wants self-experience) by the DGUV. The film shows a normal work day of three slightly different young workers - Michael, Micky and Mike. They encounter the same situations and risks, but their actions and reactions are completely different. The main goal of the film is to motivate young trainees to deal with issues of safety and health at work, on the road and in their leisure time. Producer, screenwriter and director of the film is Thomas Plonsker, Plonsker media GmbH.
You can watch the whole film here.
For more information, please visit the website of the World Media Festival and the webite of the "Youth wants self-experience" campaign.

The European Organisation for Stress Hazard Evaluation is a non-profit organization founded in Sweden with the aim to help reducing European occupational stress related costs: human costs to workers and their families, business costs to organisations and companies and costs to society. To achieve this aim, EurOSHE provides companies and public sector with tailor made Psychosocial Risk Management following the European framework (PRIMA-EF).
Psychosocial Risk Management starts with the identification of problems and an assessment of the risk that they pose: Psychosocial/Stress Hazard Evaluation.
EurOSHE’s aim is also to promote and support the scientific development of psychosocial risk management and its border areas, and to support research and education within this field.
For more information, please take a look at the partner's page of EurOSHE.

The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) published a new report on lifelong learning: "Learning while working".
Companies wish to improve their employees’ skills for a specific job, employees have an interest in developing skills that can generally raise their career and employment prospects. Adult learning in the workplace brings a fundamental contribution to lifelong learning strategies, flexicurity and employment policies, it also supports policy measures for increasing enterprises’ capacity for innovation, competitiveness and adaptation to sectoral changes.
This report calls for strong synergies between policies and programmes for innovation, research, enterprise development and training, which should go hand-in-hand. It is based on previous research undertaken by Cedefop between 2003 and 2010.
More information and the full report for download are available on the Cedefop website.