When we first began planning the CoGen Voices Fellowship, we knew we'd face a few challenges. The group of 21 community changemakers was intentionally diverse — by age (15 to 81!), race, location, work, experience, and more. We'd have to meet many different needs and...
At CoGenerate, we believe in the power of cogeneration: a strategy to bring older and younger people together to forge bonds across differences, combat polarization and ageism, and help solve today’s toughest problems. If you’re involved or interested in cogeneration,...
https://youtu.be/OedAsZVTm9U?si=q20TIH8zuwPEhE0a Today in the US, more than 2.4 million children whose parents are unable to care for them live in grandfamilies, where they are raised by grandparents or other loved ones. Until recently, their experiences have been all...
Ernie, 80 and Cedar, 13, show off the rocks they decorated with symbols based on their conversation.Last month, I traveled to Chautauqua, a 150-year-old institute in western New York that brings thousands of people together for summer programs focused on lifelong...
I’m pleased to share a new report, Beyond Passing the Torch: Recommendations on Leveraging Age Diversity to Build a Stronger Democracy Now — a landscape analysis of 25 civic organizations. Its goal: to document and learn from their cross-generational activities and make recommendations for leveraging each generation’s unique civic attributes to strengthen democracy.
It’s particularly fitting that this study was conducted as a cross-generational collaboration between CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) and two other organizations with complementary generational expertise — Generation Citizen and the Millennial Action Project. Together, our organizations are a microcosm of the broader civic engagement field.
“Building a strong democracy requires a long view – and everyone at the table. No one generation can do it alone,” we write collectively in the forward. “We hope the lessons learned through this collaborative research effort can point the way towards a more united future – one that elevates the perspectives of younger and older people and promotes the cross-generational bridging, visioning, and healing so deeply needed today.”
We are particularly grateful to the New Pluralists for funding this collaborative project and for elevating age-diversity as an essential component to creating belonging in a healthy democracy.
Thanks also to my wonderful colleagues at Generation Citizen (Elizabeth Clay Roy, Dairanys Grullon-Virgil, and Sydelle Barreto) and the Millennial Action Project (Layla Zaidane). And of course, to the many inspiring civic leaders and researchers featured in the report who do the difficult but rewarding work of cogenerating solutions in their communities every day, including:
Read the study here.