Dear JPI MYBL Community,
For the past two years we have managed our collaboration virtually. Nevertheless, we have maintained an impressively high level of activities. A new call was launched, and its projects are ongoing. A final seminar was held showcasing the key achievements from one of our previous calls, and we are working on further dissemination of results and policy implications. A new activity ” knowledge sharing” based on the COVID experiences, was launched and will be finalised later this year; just to mention some activities.
We had thought that society, as well as our collaboration, would bounce to ”normal” once the Covid restrictions had been lifted. However the various disruptions in the world are causing a general feeling of insecurity which also has its effect on our member organisations, the ministries they depend on and on you, our MYBL community. What has also come to light is that our joint programming initiative with its holistic view on population ageing, its large variation in members and its flexibility in instruments used; is still very relevant today. Thus, we need to ensure that our plans for the future can be initiated with large support and commitments from our members and stakeholders.
Several physical meetings are planned at the start of the autumn term. With the chairs and vice chairs of the advisory boards the Steering Committee will discuss strategies and priorities. These will be presented during the ” live” General Assembly meeting in October in Berlin. I am confident that it will bring some fresh air in our collaboration.
I wish you all a very nice summer!
Peter Allebeck
JPI MYBL Chair