SIforAGE has been one of the projects that the European Commission selected to be showcased on the social networks in the framework of the European Year of Citizens (EYC). 2013 has been chosen the European Year of Citizens, and it has been conceived as a chance to inform Europeans about their rights and rise awareness of the opportunities that EU citizenship entails.

That is why an active media campaign to promote initiatives covering different policy areas and themes relevant to European Union citizens has been launched (http://europa.eu/citizens-2013/). 31st of August was SiforAGE's turn: the whole European Commission's social networks gave all its followers the chance to get posted about SiforAGE's latest activities and research, and engage themselves in a debate with members of the project.

The European Commission used their Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts to showcase SiforAGE in such a way that citizens interested in the project could post comments and questions that were answered by SiforAGE's members, as well as visit SiforAGE's website and communication tools. This opportunity goes hand in hand with one of the most important aims of our project: to engage participation and awareness of the challenges EU citizens face regarding healthy and active ageing.

Many of the citizens' comments drove the discussion towards the need for improving housing opportunities especially for aged people, as well as increasing intergenerational cooperation, and fighting against irrespectful attitudes towards the elderly. In that sense, SIforAGE project strives to promote a new view of the elderly people as active citizens who are able, increasingly, to offer greater benefits to their communities. During the debate SiforAGE announced as well that the project will launch a prize in November 2016 to recognize good practices on social innovation on ageing research. Overall, SIforAGE Communication Team took notes of all these comments and invited everybody to actively participate in SIforAGE.

During EYC campaing, SIforAGE posts on European Commission social networks gathered more than 93 “likes”, 27 sharings (Facebook), and 46 “+” (Google+). Similarly, the project is currently on all the social networks with the greatest impact: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, and Youtube. Its website has had 1600 visits since the beginning of the project, and the more than 200 stakeholders involved in SiforAGE are nowadays actively using its communication tools to keep posted about the project's progresses and news.