Simple question: Do you miss human connection when you use self-checkout at the grocery store? Complex question: How is cogeneration threatened by AI, profit-driven “efficiencies,” and automation — and what can we do about it? Allison Pugh, author of the book The Last...
On Friday, May 15, I had the great honor to address the 2026 graduates of Drew University, including the undergraduate College of Liberal Arts, the Theological School, and the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies. I'm very grateful to Drew's remarkable President...
Across the country, young people and older people are stepping up as civic leaders. But too often, they do this critical work with peers, in age-segregated spaces. Young people work without the benefit of older generations who bring lived experience, networks, and a...
Is your organization ready to tackle one of the toughest but most transformative shifts in intergenerational collaboration? In this session, you’ll hear from three leaders spearheading efforts to diversify board involvement. This will be a learning-in-public...
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.