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TRAMP – Transnational Mobility of Older People in Europe
92 Part II
ving mastered their professional challenges despite a variety of problems they
have had to cope with and of having achieved progress in their career over the
years; during the cooperation this positive attitude towards their job is usually
passed on to younger people.
Initial experience in the intercultural context shows that pleasure in manual
work crosses boundaries and that it can bring together the participating
seniors, if an adequate target group has been chosen. This is the effect of the
common interest in an all-consuming kind of job, of the common intention –
the completion of a product, the encouragement of young people – and of the
cooperative working process. The participants can employ nonverbal communication
much better than in an exchange programme with a different focus
as is the case in seminars or visits. Since many working processes are common
knowledge throughout Europe and only vary in details, the agreement on
single working operations is not usually a problem.
A particularly important effect of the collective experience during the project
is the fact that it brings together participants in the other modules of the
exchange programme (supporting programme) as well and that it serves as an
initiation of further contact among them. It motivates the participants to set
aside potential caution or reserve due to a poor command of language and
makes them communicate with few words and nonverbally, or to look for
an interpreter straight away. Thus the target group of older people with no
intercultural experience gains valuable support in opening up to cross-border
contacts in general.
Experience during the TRAMP-Project
That cooperative work has become the methodical focus within the TRAMP
Project was a result of the choice of the target group. That is why senior citizens
were deliberately chosen most of who had little access to formal education
and generally a poor command of foreign languages. So people should take
an interest in the issue Europe who have little opportunity for intercultural
encounters unless they get organisational support and who do not really have
the required skills. Yet in order to enable the participants to communicate,
it was decided in advance to choose the high level of identification with the
individual profession and the personal career as a connecting factor.
So all German participants of the exchange programmes had been industrial
workers or craftsmen, and the focus of their former honorary activities
showed clearly that practical and technical work still took the center stage
during their retirement. More or less the same applied to the French participants,
most of whom were retired craftsmen who passed their knowledge on
to children and adolescents. Some French participants had been coal miners
by trade and did unpaid work then. Before their retirement, the Czech participants
had had various jobs, yet all of them were into practical and creative
activities then. Experience shows that this group of people does not have a
deep interest in formal education, they are rather interested in offerings of
practical activities.