Sharjah24: Sharjah Social Services Department (SSSD) reviewed 19 models of a global practice of age-friendly cities during the virtual workshop organised by the Sharjah Office of Age-friendly Cities, to introduce interested parties, officials and all members of society to the most prominent practices in the world.

Good practice means initiatives or projects that have been implemented by age-friendly cities and have had a positive return and impact on the lives of the elderly, or have led to a qualitative change in the provision of services to them.

Aisha Hashem, Deputy Director of the Sharjah Office for Age-Friendly Cities, points out that the aim of highlighting good practices in this field is to exchange and transfer knowledge and highlight good practices applied by global cities to provide the opportunity to benefit as much as possible from these practices and apply them in a manner that is commensurate with the nature of the Emirati environment. It leads to the strengthening of Sharjah's position and making it a destination for benchmarking and the capital of excellence in the Arab world based on being the first Arab emirate to have membership in the global network of Age-friendly cities.

The selected models were presented from Japan, America, China, Australia, Chile, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, Europe, Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal, and it is noticeable that there are many initiatives in several countries such as China, Sweden and Japan, which indicates their great interest in the elderly, and the reason may be due to the proportion of the elderly in their population census.