Since last year, students of the School of Nursing of the University of Navarra have been collaborating in a project of volunteer activities of the School for the accompaniment of elderly people in the Amma Oblatas Residential Center in Pamplona. This activity is part of Tantaka, the university's solidarity time bank.

Volunteers come to the center, on a voluntary basis, once a week. There they carry out activities to accompany the residents, especially those who, depending on their circumstances, need it most. The project aims to encourage participation and social relations among the residents while promoting intergenerational solidarity through mutual learning between young and old.

For us students it is an opportunity and a stimulus at the same time," says Marta González, one of the volunteers, "because it helps us to reflect on the value of solidarity between generations. According to this student, "we live in a society in which the elderly are becoming more and more representative and we university students have to learn to live with this reality and know how to take advantage of it".

Sensitizing the university community
The current social context requires adopting a vision of aging as a natural process in people's lives, just another stage, and not as a problem. Nuria Esandi, from department of Nursing Care for Adult Patients, points out that this initiative "aims, on the one hand, to cover a need for support for institutionalized elderly people and, on the other hand, it is an investment in future generations, who are the driving force behind changes in social attitudes. It is our task to sensitize the university community in the construction of a more supportive, respectful and manager society with the elderly".

In this framework, students Nuria Domenech, Carmen Alfaro, Carmen Molina and Marta González, from the fourth year of Nursing, under the direction of Nuria Esandi, presented the work 'Towards a new generation': volunteer activities program for the accompaniment of the elderly", at the XVI State congress of volunteer activities held in late November in Pamplona. For Carmen Alfaro "the participation in this congress was a very satisfactory experience as it allowed us to develop and strengthen skills to work in group".