<< Background >>European societies are ageing. In 1950, only 12% of the European population was over age 65. Today the share has already doubled, and projections show that in 2050 over 36% of Europe’s population will be 65-plus years old. Promoting older citizens’ civic engagement and participation has emerged as key topic to society. Especially in a time where major disinformation campaigns are interfering with democratic processes, with 68% of Europeans admitting coming across to fake news at least once a week in a recent study done by the European Commission in 2018. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that people over 65 share seven times more fake news than young users do in social media. This situation especially got worse with the COVID-19 pandemic where the exposition, traffic, and using of internet to stay informed and share information increased drastically. The spread of both disinformation and misinformation can have a range of consequences, such as threatening our democracies, interfering with elections, polarizing debates, and putting the health, security, and environment of EU citizens at risk. As a major challenge for Europe, it requires a coordinated response of all agents in society and a strong focus on education in media literacy and engagement of all generations towards a mindful citizenship. “LINK” is a 2-years-project that aims to create a non-formal educational strategy for organizations and facilitators to be prepared to promote digital media literacy and a mindful participation of senior citizens in democratic life. It will gather five entities (public and private) from PT, PL, IT and ES with a large and complementary experience in adult education and active aging promotion across Europe, that are motivated in offering lifelong learning opportunities specially design to seniors to allow them to accompany the digital transformation, fight disinformation campaigns and fake news and encouraging them to participate actively in society.<< Objectives >>(1)To create a capacity-building programme to develop digital media literacy and a mindful democratic participation among senior citizens. (2)To empower facilitators and educators on how to promote an active and mindful citizenship among seniors. (3)To encourage the exchange of experience and methodology among partners, reinforcing the network, and increasing organizations’ capacity and educators’ competences.(4)To reflect on democracy pillars and seniors’ fundamental role as European Citizens towards democracy preservation, promoting their social and digital inclusion.(5)To create awareness on how disinformation and propaganda events interfere with democracy, promote critical thinking, media, and digital literacy.(6)To experiment and analyze different digital tools to promote the potential of European Citizenship as a mean to improve civic engagement and social inclusion among seniors.(7)To raise awareness among seniors to the importance of the common EU values, the principles of unity and diversity, reinforcing a sense of belonging to a common European space, creating connections, and providing sense of unity.(8)To provide an opportunity to participate in two transnational educational exchanges among seniors from different countries, reinforcing a European identity and Intercultural learning.<< Implementation >>To develop a non-formal educational strategy to promote digital media literacy and a mindful participation of senior citizens in democratic life, we count with three types of main activities: 1. Creation of an Observatory of Good Practices to promote senior active engagement in democratic life and media literacy across Europe.2. Development and validation of a capacity-building program to work these topics and skills with seniors that gathers: 2.1. One staff training mobility in Spain 2.2 Four Pilots in Portugal, Spain, Poland, and Italy that includes: - Local learning sessions with seniors - 1 Study Visit for senior learners and educators to the European Commission in Brussels - 1 Mobility of Senior Learners in Italy - Final Peer-to-Peer Learning Sessions - Validation/ Impact Analysis of the programme3. Four Multiplier Events – LINKing Fairs - in the four countries.During and after the project, the project team jointly and all partners individually will carry on communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities, establishing an effective quality and evaluation system for ensuring proper monitoring and evaluation of the project management and its results.<< Results >>LINK will empower adult educators and organizations, by creating, testing, and disseminating an innovative pedagogical strategy that addresses critical thinking, active engagement in society, mindful democracy, and promotion of the EU values in later life among senior citizens.We expect to improve the way adult educators and organizations (public and private) address digital media literacy and civic engagement among seniors and to create a strategy that can be replicated among Europe. Starting by impacting the five involved organizations, we want to test and to create guidelines that can be easily adapted to other contexts across EU as adult schools, senior residences and youth education.In parallel, we expect to change the way senior citizens perceive social media and democracy, developing important skills like critical thinking and promoting their mindful participation. We will contribute to their social and digital inclusion, making them aware and identified with the EU common values. Finally, we will contribute to the change needed of the perception of society towards aging and value the role of older citizens in our communities and in our EU as they are also the future of Europe.