“Cycling Without Age” (CWA)
Cycling Without Age is a foundation that was established in Denmark 2015, but is now represented in 47 countries.
The main idea is that elderly people living in care centres or elderly people offered home care are given the opportunity to get a bike ride in a trishaw. The trip involves what is referred to as the three P’s: pilots, passengers and personnel. The pilot (driver) is either a volunteer or an employee from the care centre or home care, the passenger is the elderly person and personnel refer to the employees and/or administration at the care centre/home care. The main objective of Cycling Without Age is presented as giving the elderly the right to wind in the hair by ensuring mobility and active partaking in society.
Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
A key stakeholder in a Danish context is the municipality, and more specifically the managers and employees at care centres and home care. The service of the bike ride cannot be outlived without these. Another key stakeholder is thus the politicians, who have been part of pushing the idea forward. Besides the public sector stakeholders, a key actor is the volunteers and the beneficiaries are the elderly.
Co-creation process
The idea and the service of getting a bike ride is not the outcome of co-creation, understood as deliberative innovation processes. Anyhow the idea has been developed and tailored to countries outside Denmark, where the public sector is not the main provider of elderly care.
Digital Transformation Process
CWA offers a digital booking platform, but the interviews revealed that for some care centres it was easier to use a manual calendar. And in the cases using the platform, it is not transforming practices and procedures.
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
It is difficult to highlight specific results and outcomes of the bike ride in itself (see success criteria), but the success of CWA as a foundation and the many countries that now also offer bike rides for elderly can be seen as evidence for impact regarding the service/idea.
Challenges & Bottlenecks
The public managers stress that fiery souls are key when it comes to implementing the initiative – either positioned in the administration or within elderly care, and these need managerial back-up. Another barrier relates to the operation of CWA. The public managers tell how they are left alone with the initiative after the implementation phase. This experience is both related to the awareness from the municipality and from the CWA secretariat. To exemplify, it is the responsibility of the care centre/home care to maintain the trishaws and they are not granted any funding for repairing or buying new bicycles if they are damaged.
Transferability & Replicability
The initiative has been easily transferred to municipalities in Denmark and to other settings internationally.
Success Factors
The impact of the initiative is not perceived by CWA and public managers in traditional quantitative metrics but rather in qualitative aspects, such as the general enhancement of the joy of life among the elderly. Another positive aspect of the visibility of the elderly in the local community is an increased awareness of elderly, dementia etc. among citizens in general. Still, CWA is working on more concrete evaluation criteria to professionalise and legitimise the bike ride as a method and an approach to increased life quality among the elderly.
Lessons learned
The case of CWA is interesting due to the high degree of positivity that surrounds the movement. The initiative and the foundation do not seem to meet a lot of resistance concerning the cause per se; to ensure that elderly stay mobile and part of society. Thus, it seems that if the cause is perceived highly legitimate the room for manoeuvre increases. Externally, since it becomes easier to engage in strategic collaborations and to recruit volunteers, and internally because the organization, based on trust in their own raison d’être and main objective, becomes flexible in regards to development and organizing, as long as the main objective stays the same. Another key aspect is how the innovation is positioned in the eco-system of public elderly care services. CWA is mainly an add-on to formal elderly care, since the foundation does not overtake tasks or roles of the public sector. In this manner they are not subject to competition regarding resources and legitimacy, making it less problematic for the municipalities to engage in collaboration.