Homeshare International’s 20th anniversary was celebrated with a gigantic cake at the Brussels congress dinner in March 2019 and with the publication of a review of its recent work. Nurturing a global network: homeshare in action 2014-2019 summarises our recent activities and gives a snapshot of homesharing in spring 2019. We’ve come a long way in 20 years! Read the review here.

Our Sixth World Homeshare Congress in Brussels, Belgium, held on 21 – 22 March attracted a record 200 delegates from 17 countries – and even royalty! We were thrilled when Her Majesty Queen Mathilde of the Belgians attended the opening presentations and stayed to chat to our hosts, 1toit2ages, programme coordinators, speakers and homesharers (see a photo on our Facebook page).

The two-day conference gave delegates a wonderful mix of formal presentations, panel discussions, stories from homesharers – always very moving testimonies – and networking opportunities.  The papers and photos from the congress will be posted up shortly. www.hiworldcongressbrussels2019.com

Warmest thanks and congratulations to Claire de Kerautem, Regis and the 1toit2ages team for organising such a brilliant occasion!

We are delighted to report that the Municipality of Madrid has recently agreed to double the funding for the Convive programme! And Convive also won a project to expand Convive to cover four new municipalities around Madrid, financed by the Region of Madrid (Comunidad de Madrid). This will be the first time that homesharing has been offered outside the city. Convive’s aim is to reach 150 matches by June 2019.

As regards the strategy, Delphine Liegeois from Convive says: “We noticed that we are mainly reaching people who are very old and use the programme essentially for not being alone at night. So we are planning to start exploring new ways to reach younger retired people too, in order to promote active aging with older people of various profiles. We have been preparing a campaign to be launched shortly – see www.convive.org.es.“

Convive also started to collaborate with CNAV (the agency of the French Social Security managing pensions), and associations from France (Réseau COSI and International Erasmus Students Network France), and Belgium (1toit2ages) to promote homesharing between Spanish, French and Belgian retired people and Erasmus students. Working in this framework may help them to reach active retired people, willing to practice languages and meet young people from other countries. It will also contribute to spread homesharing around Europe.

The project should be developed in 2019-2021. It will include research, a guidebook on homesharing, a web platform Toi + moi for people willing to experience intercultural and intergenerational homesharing, a campaign promoting intergenerational homesharing, and diverse activities in the three countries engaging retired people and students. Convive hopes to secure funding for the project from the Erasmus programme plus the French agency.

Catch up with their latest news at the Brussels congress!

The Homeshare Australia and New Zealand Alliance (HANZA) has published their latest newsletter.  See HANZA newsletter August 2018 to download and read.

We are always delighted to discover new homeshare programmes are starting, or thriving.  But to learn about a new programme in Prague from our colleagues in Australia is an unexpected pleasure.