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What is the problem/issue you are trying to address?

The municipality of Sluis wants to give Cadzand-Bad a powerful impulse with the recognition of a badstatus and to the achievement of this profiling as a qualified vitality and wellness destination. Cadzand-Bad wants to develop a vitality boulevard including a new vitality concept (with thalassotherapy) where vitality, wellness and health quality and professional are offered. The underlying goal is the development of a contemporary and high-quality form of tourism that spending via a new impetus and new audiences year round tourism. Dorp Cadzand (Village) and Bad Cadzand (beach part) are about 2 km apart. The local population lives mostly in the village while second home owners and tourists stay mainly in the ‘Bad’ area. The question is how to  combine these areas, finding solutions that keep the elderly active and increase vitality, aslo tackling the problem of loneliness.

That’s why we look how better products and services can be developed both for people living here and having their second home here, that encourage an active lifestyle, more reliance and longer independence of elderly.

Pilot aim

What is it and how did you arrive at it?

The partners (Lead = Impuls Zeeland) and HZ (scientific support) would like to develop products and services both for people living in Cadzand and Cadzand-Bad and having their second home there, to better combine both areas, finding sustainable solutions that keep elderly active and increase vitality, also tackling the problem of loneliness by looking at network solutions.

• Seaside resort Cadzand-Bad is rewarded with the ‘Bad-status’
• Developing better products & services for inhabitants and tourists
• The SAIL project builds on and broadens the challenge to implement the badstatus with a focus on sports & movement.

Stakeholders on your pilot

People and organisations represented, number of stakeholder meetings and total number of people at each stakeholder meeting.

• Interviewing a lot of stakeholders separately: inhabitants, entrepreneurs, tourists.

• We invest in contacts with the village council of Cadzand and the local social club for elderly people (by several conversation and by visiting local activities and events for local elderly like an event social music event for specific elderly people of Cadzand on 1 September 2017
• We took part in several regional and provincial meetings about health and tourism (Contacta, DVR Kick off etcera).
• We organized a meeting with inhabitants of Cadzand and Retranchement about living active and independent longer.
• On Provincial level Impuls participates in a core group concerning healthy province Zeeland. The participation strengthens the support for the project SAIL and imbedding in local structures and existing projects.
• We dispersed a questionnaire to elderly inhabitants from the age 55+ to gather data about the current situation on movements/ sports/ activities/ nutrition/ wellbeing and their social network
• Visiting Food Fest Cadzand
• In July 2017 GGD Zeeland and Impuls interviewed several tourists of Cadzand-Bad and asked them about their wishes in relation to current products and services and their wishes for the future.
• Organisation lunch for elderly inhabitants on 20 September 2017 talking about three issues: nutrition, movement & sport, Loneliness & wellbeing.
• Organisation stakeholders meeting on 24 October 2017, collecting ideas for the pilots based on the collected needs of inhabitants, tourists and second residents.
• Entrepreneur in Cadzand-Bad who has an idea for a mobile food kiosk in combination with a dune garden.
• Conversations with content experts concerning the pilot ideas and possible combinations, e.g.. setting up a fitnesstest for elderly linked to a healthy lifestyle advise, writing a subsidyplan and realisation of a combination  of sports & movement on the Feel Good Market, providing input for a feasibility study for the realization of a Thalassocentre (Subsidy for the feasibility study has been rewarded)
• In short:

• • [ Survey elderly inhabitants]
  • Organization stakeholdermeetings:
  • 24 September 2017: lunch for elderly inhabitants (11 inhabitants)
  • 24 October 2017: 1st stakeholdermeeting: collecting ideas (33 participants)
  • 29 March 2018: 2nd stakeholdermeeting: selection ideas and enriching ideas
  • 23-25 May 2018: ESPA Congress
  • Attending several local networkmeetings
  • Meetings potential partners for developing business cases.

Pilot beneficiaries

Who will benefit from this pilot? What is the goal that you are trying to achieve with this pilot?

• Inhabitants via village council
• Tourists and second residents of Cadzand
• Local authorities
• Entrepreneurs of Cadzand-Bad and Cadzand village, leisure entrepreneurs, owners association: residences and hotels, elderly care services The goal is to develop new business or service models that contribute to active and healthy ageing as well as the local economy.

Ideas generated

What ideas were generated from your stakeholder meetings?

We collected a list of 13 clusters of ideas during the stakeholders meeting.

1. Thematization of the Vitality boulevard (wellnesspavilion & thalassotherapy & spiritual activities/ sport- and movement activities/ cultural activities (music, dance)/ embedding nature/ food & drinks)
2. Realisation year-round facility
3. Realisation Tienhondertpolder
4. Organisation of small events/ happenings (f.e. sport- or yogafestival)
5. Realisation connecting ‘Experience’-path between Cadzand village and Cadzand-Bad à wellness route
6. Using the dune-garden with local vegetables and herbs
7. Fresh foodmarket with local products
8. Healthtourism
9. Mobile Food/drinkkiosk
10. Shopping for daily living in relation to mobility
11. Socialisation by movement
12. Linking elderly people to tourists/ visitors
13. Deploy elderly people in the touristic sector for staff shortage

Values for selection

Based on the information collected at the stakeholders meetings and other interviews or conversations held in the location, what are important underlying values for your project? Such as valuing the opinions of your users or needing your project to be cost neutral at this stage for some of your partners?

We have a list of values we collected during our interviews and meetings. 

• Independence (doing what you want)
• Social network
• Involvement
• Togetherness
• Innovative
• Perseverance
• Freedom (planning your own daily activities)
• Be active (mainly for the younger < 70 years)
• Creativity
• Burgundian/ Culinary
• Connection with your roots
• Create new initiatives

Acceptability

How did the project team, other organisations and your participants react to the project idea? What is the level of involvement/commitment from each group at this stage? Evidence could include: participant observation at initial project meetings and the reflections of the project group.

The inhabitants are enthusiastic about the ideas mentioned in the stakeholders meetings. They are looking forward to have more opportunities to meet each other. The entrepreneurs seems to be willing to organize something for the local inhabitants. We have good connections with the entrepreneurs.

We have good commitment/collaboration from and with the village council and the social elderly club. Representing the inhabitants. Engaging tourists and second home residents is very difficult. This is due to the fact that second home residents are not permanently present and are difficult to locate and thereby to reach them. It is also difficult to engage tourists. They are on holiday and for entrepreneurs it is uncomfortable to ask their guest for an interview.

Westtoer in Ostend experienced the same difficulty in reaching second home residents. Westtour had indicated that the development of a Wellnessroute is more difficult to organize at the Belgian coast, especially the creation of a Thalassocenter that is supported by local entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs at the Belgian coast are rather individualistic and less open to create cooperation between each other, there are mainly focused at their own company. In the Netherlands there exists a mentality of working together to create a new offer by e.g. creating common investment funds.

E.g. Instead of creating a separate wellness offer inside the hotel, entrepreneurs will create one common wellness offer (e.g. Thalassocenter) and create partnerships with this Thalassocenter.

Demand

What is the demand for your project? How do you know this, what information did you use to help you?

The demand for the project is that inhabitants feel the need to have more opportunities to meet each other (social interaction)/combatting loneliness. We try to connect this with activities based on vitality and a healthy lifestyle on movement and sports. We know this by speaking to the inhabitants en reflecting with them the different ideas collected during the stakeholders meetings.

Implementation/Practicality/Organisational/Financial Feasibility

How feasible does your project look to your team at this stage in terms of practicality, and financial feasibility?

Financial feasibility for the pilots is a problem at this moment. We don't have money for pilots and spent a lot of time trying to find money to run the pilots. Financial feasibility in the future we are working on f.e. by working very close together with the city council (witch can request for finance for local activities at the township). We also try to connect close with the welfare department of Sluis. We had some difficulties doing that because of retiring of the welfare contact person of Cadzand and the change of persons during this period.

Additional assets and resources

Do you need any additional assets or resources including expertise to help you deliver your project?

Adaptation

Have you made any changes to your origin al plans, why did you make the change and what information did you base your new plans on? For instance any changes you made to the context, format, timing, setting or population at this stage?

Summarizing the ideas it seems that most important for the elderly people is: thematization of the boulevard in relation to wellness/ thalasso, the supply of divers activities encouraging active aging in the environment, healthy food & drinks and cultural activities.  We have to take in consideration the values collected by developing the pilots (such as mobility, togetherness, be active etc). Furthermore it is promising that entrepreneurs are willing to organise things specifically for the inhabitants. They are social involved with the local community, because most entrepreneurs are born and raised in Cadzand.

Integration

Do you think this project will work within the current local setting/structures? What changes need to be made to integrate your new project into existing infrastructure or programs?

We have to secure the activities in local structures like the city council/social club for elderly and preferable the connection with the community welfare organisation.

Selected ideas for next phase

Based on the areas stated above, which ideas from your meetings have been selected for the phase of design and develop on SAIL?

The following ideas are selected:

Development of a Wellnessroute / boulevard Cadzand-Bad:

1. Offering different forms of movement  in combination with a fitnesstest and lifestylecoach
2. Organizing small scale events/ activities around the theme Sport & Movement
3. Thalassocentre (seperate process)