The ‘Ceol le Chéile’ Donegal Intergenerational Choir was flying the flag for Donegal at the National Age Friendly Awards yesterday at Croke Park.
The choir scooped the ‘Age Friendly Active & Healthy Aging Award’ for their successful efforts in bringing generations together through music.
Eight category awards were presented on Thursday evening to groups who take an innovative and creative approach to making Ireland a great place in which to grow old.
The Donegal Intergenerational choir was established in February 2018 as an action of the Donegal Age Friendly Strategy to provide social participation opportunities for older people and to promote intergenerational, social inclusion and cross-community activity between young people and older people in County Donegal.
The project is led by the Social Inclusion Unit of Donegal County Council, and supported by the HSE, Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Creative Ireland, Healthy Ireland and Local Link.
Designed initially as a health and wellness project, the initiative has delivered substantially on this objective.
Research has indicated that participation in this choir has helped older people who are dealing with health issues including dementia, depression and mobility issues and many of the young people have been assisted with confidence and anxiety problems. Participants in the project range from age eight to people who are in their eighties.
The project has been delivered in a way that provides participation opportunities and access to health and wellbeing support, performances to date have included Earagail Arts Festival, Donegal Bay and Bluestacks Festival, Connecting for Life Conference, TILDA seminar, and a programme of Christmas shows.
For the remainder of 2019 the choir are scheduled to perform at the Pan Celtic festival, Earagail Arts Festival, Culture Night as well as visiting Residential and Day Care Centres throughout the County.
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