Almeida se une a la celebración del Día de los Abuelos como una auténtica red social

Almeida celebrating Grandparents Day

The City Council of Madrid is committed to intergenerational relationships among the city’s population through various initiatives that connect people of different ages to generate mutual learning. Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida participated today in an activity that stimulated the connection between older adults and children through games and reading in a day of coexistence between the students of the Municipal Nursery School Los Gavilanes and their grandparents on Grandparents Day.

Through these initiatives, the City Council of Madrid contributes to the transfer of knowledge and experiences between both population groups. On the one hand, enriching the education of children and on the other, giving older adults the opportunity to continue contributing value to society; in this case, to the education and well-being of students.

Almeida, accompanied by the delegate for Social Policies, Family, and Equality, José Fernández, and the councilor of Tetuán, Paula Gómez-Angulo, explained that today, the feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, «is a good day to appreciate a true social network within our society,» like grandparents, people «always willing and to whom we owe so much and whose role we must reclaim.» The mayor highlighted a phrase from the children’s artwork exhibition at the educational center he visited, which demonstrates that grandparents «have money in their heads and gold in their hearts, a good description of what they embody,» as they show «in everything they contribute to their families and society as a whole.»

Promoting intergenerationality

The City Council of Madrid promotes different projects that encourage intergenerationality, recognizing it as a path to personal growth and as one of the antidotes against isolation. In fact, the new Municipal Strategy against unwanted loneliness in older people includes in its first axis, related to the promotion of active aging, the launch of the new Municipal Intergenerational Center Ouka Leele, the first of its kind in Madrid, which will bring together older adults and young people in the same space and will open at the end of the year in Arganzuela.

This unique resource will be the maximum exponent of a dynamic that the Department of Social Policies, Family, and Equality and the districts are already promoting in the Network of Municipal Senior Centers, composed of 91 facilities, and through Volunteers for Madrid, who in 2021 launched the intergenerational program «Reading with older people.» Through this proposal, participants accompany older and dependent people, while encouraging them to start reading.

Conciliation in nurseries

The City Council is committed to strengthening the network of educational centers that cover the age range from 0 to 3 years and, to do so, increases the offer of places continuously each year. In the 2024-2025 academic year, up to a total of 8,618 places will be offered, 111 more than the previous year, thanks to the expansion of the El Duende nursery in Centro, and the upcoming opening of a new one in Tetuán in January 2025.

Additionally, the Department of Works and Equipment is building two nurseries in Salamanca and Centro, and in the current term, the construction of two more in Retiro and Usera is planned. Through these actions, the City Council facilitates the early schooling of children, crucial for their integral development, and responds to the need of families to reconcile personal and professional life, one of the pillars on which the new Child Promotion Plan that the City Council will present in September of next year revolves around.