The "Age-Friendly Municipality" recognition underlines the quality of the Age-Friendly Municipality (AFM) approach undertaken by a municipality, an RCM or an Aboriginal community to promote active aging. This recognition is awarded by the Minister responsible for Seniors and Caregivers for the duration of the MADA action plan and is also recognized by the World Health Organization.
To keep it, a municipality, RCM or Aboriginal community must update its policy and action plan when they expire (Gouvernement du Québec - French redirection).
A Cocoriko platform can help you achieve your goals for community collaboration on your policy and/or action plan. Here are some things to consider.
Technological skills of seniors
Seniors under 70 are often comfortable enough to participate online, if you provide appropriate guidance.
For example, offer a good step-by-step explanation of the account creation and participation process on your corporate website.
Promotion to seniors
It is important to reach people where they are. They rarely visit social media! Think carefully about how to reach them specifically so that they are well represented in your participatory process. For example:
Pairing your platform with in-person meetings
The consultation can be paired with a few in-person roundtables to collect ideas from people who are likely to be less connected and to populate the platform with proposals from the community.
This is not about collecting participation from people on the online platform since each person must create their own account to express their opinion and post comments. Rather, it is about facilitating a discussion on the same themes as the online platform and collecting ideas for proposals. You then create new proposals based on your discussions with the participants.
You can consult the example of the Municipality of Saint-Adolphe d'Howard. The proposals with the character logo are the result of round table discussions with the community. Click here (in French).
Tip
While people are on site for a roundtable discussion, you can take the time to introduce them to the Cocoriko platform and help them create an account. They might be curious to express their opinion after the meeting! And they will tell their friends about it.
Integrate a traditional survey into your Cocoriko platform
Your platform will host consultation topics on which your community can give feedback, add comments and write new proposals. Statistics are available in real time and participation is transparent. These topics can include recreation, housing and the living environment, safety, transportation and mobility, etc.
As part of your consultation, if you need space to conduct a traditional online survey, you can incorporate a SurveyMonkey or Typeform survey as one of your consultation topics. Such a survey can, for example, host the results of telephone surveys.
Note: You must set up your survey on the chosen survey platform and have the necessary subscription to do so. You will also see the results there. Cocoriko does not provide support for survey development and does not include the data in its pay-per-view report. This survey will behave exactly as if the person completed the survey on the chosen platform.
If you have any question
The Government of Quebec also provides a guide (in French) to municipalities undertaking an Age-Friendly Municipality initiative.