Friendships are finally getting their due. Once relegated to a distant third position after life partners and children, a spate of new books are spotlighting the importance of friends. And research shows that people with close friends are healthier – both emotionally...
Lyiam Galo is the co-director of Generations United for Service, a program of the Northern Santa Barbara County United Way and one of 10 awardees of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity. Watch for interviews with all 10 of these innovators bringing...
E.N. West is the co-founder and lead organizer of the Faith Land Initiative of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, one of 10 awardees of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity. Watch for interviews with all 10 of these innovators bringing older and...
Maree Beers is the co-director of Empowering Tillamook Country through Financial Wellness, a program of Urban Rural Action, and one of 10 awardees of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity. Watch for interviews with all 10 of these innovators bringing...
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.