On 8 and 9 September, the partners of the StratAGEic project – The power of strategic litigation to tackle discrimination in old age met in Brussels for the project’s second in-person consortium meeting. Hosted by AGE Platform Europe, the meeting gave us the chance to review the work carried out so far, exchange experiences and discuss the next stages of the project.
The meeting started with a roundtable in which partners were invited to reflect on their experience of StratAGEic after more than a year of working together. It was a useful moment to look back at what has been achieved, but also at what we have learned from working across different countries, organisations and areas of expertise.
Partners then reviewed the overall progress of the project and moved on to discuss the activities planned for the coming months.
Much of the discussion focused on how to put strategic litigation into practice. Upcoming activities will include online workshops on the opportunities and challenges faced by older persons and persons with disabilities when developing strategic litigation and accessing redress mechanisms.
Partners also discussed personalised coaching and the preparation of national litigation strategies. The aim is to build on the knowledge developed during the first part of the project and explore how it can be applied to concrete situations in different national contexts.
On the second day, the discussion continued with plans for peer support and national field visits. These activities will allow organisations to exchange experiences, learn from approaches used in other countries and reflect together on possible strategies.
The meeting also covered the future communication and dissemination of the project’s results. This included the forthcoming Guide on Strategic Litigation against ageism in old age, as well as plans for sharing the project’s outputs and making them useful to a wider audience.
For ENIL, the meeting took place shortly after the completion of the project’s online training series on strategic litigation. We are now finalising the evaluation reports from the sessions. Once completed, versions excluding identifiable personal data will be published on the project website. In the meantime, the training materials are already available on the AGE Platform Europe website, and will be uploaded into our stratAGEic project website.
The meeting ended with a review of the main decisions, upcoming actions and next steps. The project is now moving from the training and knowledge-building phase towards more practical work, including national strategies, peer learning and the development of resources that can continue to support organisations beyond the individual project activities.
Strategic litigation remains at the centre of this work, not only as a way of seeking a remedy in an individual case, but also as a tool for challenging structural discrimination and contributing to wider change.
