Improving children’s attitudes towards older people’s competences: a weekly intergenerational summer camp

BACKGROUND: Older people are the object of negative stereotypes, especially regarding their competences. As intergenerational activities are a good practice of reducing ageism, an intergenerational summer camp at the premises of a local association became a pilot study to verify whether children's attitudes towards older people, especially those regarding competences, improved after a week of intergenerational activities. In addition, to ensure the effectiveness of this project, the impact of intergenerational activities on the well-being of older people was also investigated. METHODS: For this purpose, 26 children and 10 older people responded to an in-person survey on their attitudes towards older people (children) and their well-being (older people) at the beginning and at the end of their summer camp experience. As the summer camp is a weekly event, the children participated in the final survey after one week, whereas the older people, as they were volunteers for the entire summer camp, participated in the final survey after one month. Descriptive analysis and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were performed. RESULTS: Results showed an improvement in children's attitudes towards older people, including stereotypes about their competences, and an increase in older people's well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study confirmed the positive effects of intergenerational projects and proposed the design of short-term ones in community settings. Future studies and considerations for intergenerational programmes suggested by this study are discussed.