It will take place between the 1-3 October, in Brussels (Belgium), expecting a total of +200 participants, with a set of different sessions and perspectives that will close two complementary projects:

• SIRENE | Social Innovation Responsive Environments NETwork is a Horizon Europe-funded project that started in November 2022 to support the growth of social innovation ecosystems delivering eco-friendly and sustainable community-based services for Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) in Europe. Until October 2024 the consortium is developing a workable framework for investment and the broad adoption of high-quality smart living solutions, combining the housing sector and ICT infrastructure.
• COST Action NET4Age-Friendly, with over 700 participants in 50 countries, aims to establish an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers from all sectors to foster awareness, and to support the creation and implementation of smart, healthy indoor and outdoor environments for present and future generations. NET4Age-Friendly further aims to overcome fragmentation and critical gaps at both conceptual and pragmatic innovation level in order to address the policy future requirements in Europe.

The main aim of the two above-referred initiatives is to support the implementation of inclusive communities at the local and regional level and thus the main target group foreseen are policy makers from diverse EU-Regions that can use these results to improve quality of life of citizens in their territories, along with quadruple helix actors of those regions: third sector, service providers, industry, academia and R&I.

On October 2nd the aim is to have one high-level policy event, where we will do the official handover of the final results of these initiatives to MEPs, policy-makers and EU officers, as we also officially launch the SHAFE Foundation, that will further sustain and exploit the projects’ results.