SISC – Senior Intergenerational Social Capital, answers to a problem that the whole Europe is facing a constantly ageing population and the consequent attempt to implement active ageing strategies in order to avoid social exclusion. The aim of SISC is to exploit the potential of senior workers, especially if close to retirement, fostering the transfer of individual know how and competencies to new generations of workers within companies. SISC aims to calibrate a tool overcoming two main obstacles: (1) make seniors acquainted with their own individual acquis, stressing their “shadow competencies”; (2) provide knowledge/tools for properly transferring them to new generations of workers, enhancing their will to contribute to intergenerational learning.

SISC starts from the results of a previous project leaded by the Italian partner: “OVER 55: Dalla Prevenzione del prepensionamento alla gestione innovativa degli over 55” (VS/2004/0371), that produced an info-training pathway on wise mentoring, targeted to HR managers. OVER 55 was a very good experience to be replicated European-wide. This 2 years project will define, test and calibrate an ad hoc INDIVIDUALISED e-learning pathway targeted to senior workers close to retirement, taking into account different EU national priorities and andragogy key statements.

The tool -available in 5 different linguistic versions- will guide seniors towards the discovering of own shadow competences, and a proper performance of the entrepreneurial mentor’ role within a company. SISC multi-actorial partnership, through its wide network of enterprises, will be able to reach the addressed target through first dissemination contacts with entrepreneurs, convincing them of the importance of exploiting senior workers’ know how through its transfer to new generations of workers. This first step will enable a deep, transnational and motivated use of the realised ICT-based learning tool by a wide number of senior workers.