The CENIE or the value of cooperation: More than 1,000,000 users

On 17 November 2017, the International Centre on Ageing (CENIE) was presented in the Portuguese city of Faro. A joint initiative of Spain and Portugal in the framework of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) INTERREG V-A Cooperation Programme, Spain-Portugal, POCTEP, 2014-2020.

Its creation was based on the committed and constructive decision to tackle the ageing and longevity of the population as one of the strengths of the future society.

Since then, the mission of the CENIE has been based on the need to promote, accelerate and implement scientific research and discoveries, technological advances, behavioural practices and renewal of social norms so that the lives of older people will not only be healthy and rewarding for them but also for the society to which they belong. Moreover, that the elderly are identified as one of the most significant vectors of growth and improvement in many areas of community life.

The demographic transformation that is taking place necessarily requires changes that were unknown until now -both conceptual and procedural- and places society before a panorama, as yet unknown, that urgently requires new responses -also new open and hopeful visions- that will affect all levels of the community: from the personal to the social, from the political to the economic, from the educational to the cultural... 

The assumption of this global challenge must move away from what some pejoratively refer to as a "grey tsunami", polluted, no doubt, by a sterile pessimism that seems to be exhausted in the simple description of a reality loaded with dire omens.

Such a conceptualisation must be overcome with haste. The extension of life expectancy and its consequence, which is the longevity of the population, is one of the most explicit signs of our progress. One of the most extraordinary achievements of our civilising wanderings. A new paradigm that does not require vain and catastrophic alarms, of imposed nostalgia, but of actions based on knowledge, study, analysis, research, exchange of information, the sum of creative talents or the implementation of relevant experiences that will build new responses to a situation that has never happened before.

Spain and Portugal form part of the group of countries with the longest population in the world; therefore, they are legitimised, obliged, to cooperate in leading responses that conceive longevity as the moment in life when what has already been learned becomes true social capital, transferable to the whole community. 

Based on a collaborative culture, the CENIE has promoted a permanent dialogue between the fundamental actors, so often isolated or unconnected, and thus, the objective we intended has been achieved, since efforts that are never known, that are barely perceptible, or actions exclusively based on good will, on an activism that does not obey a reflexive planning or a constant and rigorous evaluation, are worthless.

The projects carried out mean a commitment to innovation, to creativity in the search for new answers. 

For all these reasons, it is a source of satisfaction to be able to share with more than 1,000,000 users the objective of the International Centre on Ageing (CENIE), which is to participate in a process of transformation in which the duration of life is accompanied by the extension of its quality. 

The International Centre on Ageing (0348_CIE_6_E) and the Programme for a Long-lived Society (0551_PSL_6_E) are the initiatives approved in the framework of the INTERREG V-A Programme, Spain-Portugal, POCTEP, 2014-2020, of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), which structure the activities promoted by the Fundación General de la Universidad Salamanca, the Direção-Geral da Saúde de Portugal, the Fundación General del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and the Universidade do Algarve.