Introduction

“Age-friendly environments foster healthy and active ageing. They enable older people to: age safely in a place that is right for them; be free from poverty; continue to develop personally; and to contribute to their communities while retaining autonomy, health and dignity.” World Health Organization (WHO) Age-friendly World, 2025.  The WHO launched in 2007 the Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities. To date, the network consists of over 1700 members who intend to develop age-friendly environments in their territories by monitoring, actions and evaluation. https://extranet.who.int/agefriendlyworld/

To support the implementation of age-friendly environments in cities and communities, the AFC Toolkit consortium (https://www.afctoolkit.eu/), led by CEOMA from Spain, developed the Age-friendly City Professional Reference profile and a training web app from 2022-2025. We are pleased to announce that the profile and web app are now ready, following validation by a diverse group of experts. In this article, we update you on the final results.

Age-friendly City professional 

The WHO concept of age-friendly cities considers eight domains of life of older adults to support inclusiveness and healthy ageing. The domains can be grouped into social environments (social inclusion, respect and participation), built environments (housing, outdoor spaces, buildings and transportation) and governmental provisions such as healthcare and social care and information. Based on the outcomes of interviews with experts from each of the domains, we developed the following profile of the Age-friendly City Professional.

The professional must have the capacity to network, work with and within communities, and facilitate or mobilise the necessary development to strengthen the community and its members. The professional must apply a bottom-up approach, starting from the needs and demands of the older members of the city or community, such as well-being, mobility or information. Based on these needs, the professional will analyse and define the best approaches and support to meet the needs. The professional must finally understand the age-friendly city framework and be able to develop and implement measures in the eight domains. 

Web app Age-friendly City training

Based on these findings, the partners developed a training programme and learning content addressed to training "professionals of reference for inclusive ageing in age-friendly cities”. The training has been validated with VET organisations and other experts during multiple meetings online and offline. 

The training materials are available in English, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian.

There are several thematic areas taken into consideration, organised into five modules based on the domains of the age-friendly cities concept:

• built and smart environments 
• social participation
• social inclusion & cooperation
• civic participation & employment
• community support & communication

Each module comprises three units of knowledge transfer on the above-mentioned topics and provides further reading opportunities. Additional good practices and quizzes are included to complete the modules. 21 transversal themes, such as accessibility, ageing, intergenerational cooperation/relations and digital technologies, have been recognised, defined and added to the appropriate modules. In total, the course will take approximately 30 hours of study.

The training is free and open-accessible for learners: https://training.afctoolkit.eu/

The WHO published the training on their website as a good practice: https://extranet.who.int/agefriendlyworld/afp/age-friendly-toolkit/

European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations

The Age-friendly City Professional Reference profile and the training have been sent to ESCO, the European organisation to organise the occupation concepts in Europe. https://esco.ec.europa.eu/en/classification. The request to ESCO is to acknowledge the AFC Profile as an occupation and add it to the list of professions. 

Consortium

CEOMA (ES): Angel Yagüe Criado (coordinator)

Mensajeros de la Paz (ES): Clara del Castillo

AFEdemy (NL): Willeke van Staalduinen and Jonas Bernitt

ANS (IT): Sara Beccati and Giusy Trogu

SOSU (DK): Lisbeth Marcussen

AGE-Platform Europe (BE and EU): Ilenia Gheno