Skopje, 22.02.2023 – “Mother Teresa” University in Skopje, in cooperation with the Hague University of Applied Sciences, today held a Panel Discussion. There were present professors Joost van Hoof and Jeroen Dikken , who together with MTU professors, Daniel Pavlovski and Elisabeta Bajrami Ollogu, will carry out a four-week project to learn how friendly the city of Skopje is for the elderly people.
During the month of March, MTU will conduct a survey with 800 citizens of Skopje, about the conditions offered by the city of Skopje for the elderly people.
The target group will consist of 400 Albanians and 400 Macedonians (both male and female). They will be asked 40 questions about the quality of the services they receive in the field of medicine, neighborhood infrastructure, transportation, how much money they receive from pension or social assistance.
Research entitled ‘How the elderly experience aging – friendly environments for the elderly in Skopje’, a quantitative study will be conducted by MTU professors, Daniel Pavlovski and Elisabeta Bajrami Ollogu, while the two professors from the Netherlands, Van Hoof and Dikken, enabled the free use of research instruments that they have created and are their authorial work, in defining the research methodology, as well as in processing and interpreting the results.
For this research are selected the following cities: Skopje in North Macedonia; Bucharest in Romania and The Hague in the Netherlands, and after receiving the results, a cultural comparison will be made between the cities of Eastern and Western Europe.
Professor Daniel Pavlovski said during the panel that Macedonia, based on the last census, has a drastic decrease in the number of the population, and at the moment there are 1,830,000 inhabitants, while demographic aging is evident.
Pro-Rector for Education and Student Affairs, Fati Iseni Ph.D., and the Pro-Rector for Finance, Investments and Development, Bujamin Bela Ph.D., expressed their gratitude to the professors from the Netherlands, for their commitment to MTU.
The project for age-friendly cities started 15 years ago, and 1400 cities from around the world are part of it. Thanks to MTU collaboration with the University of The Hague, Skopje will be the first city to stage the environment that the capital city offers for the elderly.
