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Big movements start with small actions. That’s why we launched The CoGen Pledge—a commitment to making cogeneration a part of your everyday life and ensuring the next generation is truly cogenerational.
In this webinar, our panelists share how they began building intergenerational connection and collaboration in their own lives. Whether you’ve already signed the CoGen Pledge or are just getting started, this session will equip you with ideas and inspiration to take the first step.
Panelists include:
Transcript (machine generated):
Arielle Galinsky
Hello everyone. My name is Arielle Galinsky, and I am going to be the moderator for tonight’s conversation. I am a graduate student at Harvard. I’m deeply passionate on reshaping the narrative on aging. I also serve as a senior fellow here at CoGenerate, where I’ve had the absolute privilege of working on initiatives of CoGenerate that bridge generational divides, something that is very meaningful to me. Tonight’s webinar is all about how we can build a cogenerational life with practical, tangible steps that make inter general, intergenerational connections a natural part of our day-to-day life. In my own life, I strive, I strive to bridge generational divides through my work with the Legacy Project, which is an organization that I co-founded with some peers, bringing younger and older generations together through the power of storytelling. More casually, I also love to join in on intergenerational dinners in my community and bring groups of friends from my own school for coffee and tea at local senior communities in Cambridge. Really and truly, I hope tonight that you walk away from the event with the knowledge that there are so many ways, big and small to foster cogeneration in your own life, some of which you’ll hear from our wonderful panelists here today. I’m also thrilled that I get to introduce a newly launched CoGenerate, CoGenerate initiative, one that feels like a dream come true in a long time in the making the CO Gen pledge. The CO Gen pledge is a simple yet powerful way for individuals like all of us on this call to affirm our commitment to a world that values generational diversity and to discover small and meaningful actions that foster connections across ages. I’m going to share a little bit about the cogen pledge and what we’ve seen to date in our numbers. Duncan, if you could share the slides.
Duncan Magidson
Sorry, one second, it’ll be here in a moment.
Arielle Galinsky
No webinar is complete without technical, difficulties.
Arielle Galinsky
The CoGen pledge launched last month, as I mentioned, with the aim of trying to cultivate this idea of how can we as part of this cogen network, but also, more broadly, foster cogeneration in our day to day lives. It’s a simple yet powerful tool to get people on board to this idea of cogeneration and provides practical solutions for how they can implement that in their everyday lives. Thus far, we have had 167 signatures from 22 states across the country, which is fantastic. Of course, we have a long ways to go. My goal is to get this represented in all 50 states across the country, hopefully by the end of 2025, and 10,000 signatures by the end of the year, this, by no means, is going to be an individual effort. It will take the collective all of us on this call to share it with our communities, with our networks, and to try to get these numbers up, but more importantly, to spread the idea of of cogeneration. So if you have not signed the pledge yourself, the QR code is there, and we will also share it. But this is an opportune moment to be able to join this, this cogenerational movement. And I’m so excited to have three panelists here today that are going to be talking about their work in this space. Before we get started with that, I’m going to pass it off to my colleague, Duncan, who’s going to share a little bit about the framing of tonight’s event.
Julie Burkley
Thank you so much, Arielle, and I’m switching slide decks here, so give me yet another second to pull those up. There we go. So here at CoGenerate, we have a lot of experience working with people all around the country who are bringing generations together to solve big problems. And the more we do that, the more we see a couple of common patterns that we’re thinking of as preconditions to effective cogeneration. And this is really an experiment for us. And we hope it’s useful for you to kind of think about the work you’re doing in your community in terms of these three P’s, proximity, purpose and partnership. And I’ll just explain each of them briefly so you can kind of think in your own life, where can I find these? Am I doing them? What can I do to find these and start co generating? So for proximity, that’s kind of the simplest to think about. It’s just to say that for cogeneration to happen, older and younger people need chances to interact and share spaces. Organic relationships don’t form in isolation. So if you’re not naturally crossing paths with people of different generations, it might take a little bit of effort. So look around, there are probably older and younger people in your community who you’re not already connecting with, but would have a lot to offer, and think about how you can create more opportunities for those interactions. The second P is purpose. Cogeneration isn’t just about exchanging perspectives. It’s about taking some kind of action together. When people of all different ages collaborate, whether that’s as colleagues, as neighbors, as creatives or as change makers, they’re bringing complimentary strengths, and they produce better outcomes together. And then the last is partnership. We don’t always have experience working across generations. A lot of people feel really uncertain about how to communicate with people who are a lot older or younger than them, Gen Z in particular, when we did a study with NORC at the University of Chicago, we found that Gen Z was both most enthusiastic about working across generations and most reticent To do so. Meanwhile, traditional hierarchies and power dynamics can make it really difficult to create true partnerships and collaborate as equals. But real cogeneration means rethinking those power dynamics. Instead of having one generation leading while the other follows. We want to really encourage successful partnerships with shared decision making in mutual respect, because no one wants to be dismissed just because of their age. So at the start of any project or collaboration or relationship, just think what perspectives and skills are the different generations bringing to this relationship, and how can each person contribute in a really meaningful way? So that’s the three Ps, we’re thinking proximity, purpose and partnership, when you have all of them, we really think that makes cogeneration thrive. And the question now is, how can you start putting these principles into action in your own life? And so with that kind of framing, and as you think about those, I want to pass it back to Ariel,
Arielle Galinsky
A perfect transition. Discussion, and I welcome my fellow panelists, Julie Carol Natalie, please come on camera. I’m so ecstatic for for today’s conversation, as as Duncan mentioned, this is going to be a way for us to for the audience, to for everyone joining us today, to hear ways in which cogeneration is seen in communities and day to day basis. And I’m excited to to learn from from the three of you. So before we get started, I do want to say that if you have any questions for our audience members, any questions that arise throughout this conversation, please put them in the chat. They there will certainly be an opportunity for Q and A at the end of this session. So as questions arise, please do put them in the conversation. And I would love for my three panel panelist friends to introduce themselves. Please say your name the organization you are a part of, as well as a question that I’m going to pose, how does cogeneration show up for you in your life or in the organization that you’re representing, and what excites you about it? Julia, if you want to kick it off,
Julie Burkley
Sure, hi. I’m Julia Burkley. I’m the Director of Programs at Friendship Works. Friendship Works is an organization, a nonprofit that was founded in 1984 to engage volunteers of all ages and backgrounds and supporting older adults and addressing social isolation and loneliness. In Greater Boston, we engage volunteers from ages 18 to 84 in our different programs to visit, help or or escort older adults to medical appointments. What excites me, I think, for us, the way we interpret the benefit of intergeneration or cogeneration, is that it’s an opportunity to learn from each other, that there’s something to learn and experience at every stage of life, and that So kind of in its best form, it embodies a kind of mutuality, and that every generation has a value and brings something to the table. At friendship works. It’s about building relationships across the generations that we hope will result in more empathy and tolerance and understanding, as well as reducing isolation and loneliness and so in our own way, we feel like we’re helping to strengthen communities.
Arielle Galinsky
So much. Julia, Carol, oh, well,
Carol McCullough
Hi, I bring you greetings from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Go birds, as we like to say, My name is Carol Richardson McCullough, and I am I come first as a member of an organization called Writers Room at Drexel University. Writers Room has a whole constellation of subsets that aren’t really sub that grew out of it, that each involve members who are from the university and the community which is contiguous to the university. We invite high school students in, so we’re very multi generational. Just out of the gate, there’s an organization called tripod writers room works with telling stories, writing and preserving stories. Tripod, it was an outgrowth of writers room, where we worked in the idea of photography, learning photography to document the stories and document the changes that are happening in the neighborhood as things like gentrification take place. I’m a community researcher with joy lab, Joy justice oriented Youth Education Lab at Drexel, and also part of second story collective, which works with housing, affordable housing and like a shared housing setup between university students and older members of the community where they can both help each other. So what excites me about this whole idea of cogeneration is that it that’s getting back to the way that I was raised. When I came up, elders live. My elders lived like right across the street or. Up the street or around the corner from me. So I was always used to being around older people, and they were used to being around younger people. And I think there’s just a neat kind of exchange that can happen when people are open, to always be respectful of each other and to share with each other and learn from each other. So that’s you know, to put it shortly, because I know I’m going probably over my time, but that’s what excites me the most, is anything that gets people to get along instead of being at each other’s throats in this in this day and time. So that’s what excites me.
Arielle Galinsky
I could not agree more. Carol, I think that was wonderful.
Natalie Heller
Hi everyone. My name is Natalie Heller. I’m a current sophomore in my undergrad of college. I’m calling from LA and I am with the climate Mental Health Network. I’m a Gen Z advisor for them. And prior to this, I was working I was the co-chair of the Bair Youth Climate Summit, which was an all youth led organization. And I’ll kind of get into why that was important later, because that’s kind of, I guess, the opposite of cogeneration. But I’ll explain my anecdotes from that. But the way it shows up in our organization is that we thrive on cogeneration. We have Gen Z members, but we have climate scientists, and we have teachers and educators, and kind of we all work together, and no one is everyone is valued. And that’s the way we’ve been able to be so successful is because we’re taking everyone opinions as equals. And so, if the climate scientists are talking about youth emotions and but there’s no youth representation that kind of kind of contradicts, like what you’re talking about, if you have no representation in that so that’s how it shows up in client Mental Health Network. And then within my life, I’m a student, so I’m constantly working with professors and university staff who are supporting the younger generation in creating and solving big problems like like the ones we’re going to talk about
Arielle Galinsky
today. Wonderful Julie Carol Natalie. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation, and I think let’s just get right into it and allow for some time for Q and A at the end from our audience. So Duncan gave us an introduction into the three Ps, right? The first of which I want to talk about is purpose. It’s very clear from your introductions that all of your work actively seeks to bridge generational divides, and yet there’s so much more to that, right? So whether that’s advocating for climate justice in Natalie’s case, combating housing injustice, which I know the writers room has some work in or combating social isolation, which friendship works actively doesn’t in the Boston era, you’ve demonstrated that building relationships across generations often drives change forward beyond just creating those generational relationships. So, my question for you all is, what advice can you provide for those that are listening on to the call, who are interested in making their passions, whether that’s cooking to solving world hunger, a multi-generational effort, and how can it strengthen it?
Arielle Galinsky
Julie, if you’d like to start
Julie Burkley
I guess what I would start out by saying is there’s no right or wrong answer that, but it’s really important to remember that different generations will have different norms and values and experiences and sometimes view things differently, sometimes not. So it’s really important to to know that everyone has something to give, to be curious and have a desire to listen. I think that’s kind of like the foundation of an intergenerational experience. It’s really important. In an organization like ours, it’s really easy to incorporate your passions, because our for example, our friendly visiting program, we match older adults and volunteers together for weekly visiting. And once we kind of train and and find the right match between an older adult and a volunteer, it’s really up to them to do whatever they want to get how they spend their time, and the way we match is to look for something that they have in common so we get to know the older adult and the volunteer, their interests, their hobbies, their passions, and a lot of times we’re making matches based on those. So we’ve matched people who share a love of chess, or people who were politically active, or people who love history. So we made a so that program naturally matches people, and I think it’s a great opportunity to bring whatever you want into that. I also just want to leave it before I say that. I think an intergenerational approach can also be embedded in your cause or your issue in a way that you haven’t really realized or thought of. So, for example, a lot of Gen Zers, or a lot of younger generations are very attracted to ideas of community building and social justice, and so they may think I need to look at only these kinds of volunteer opportunities at friendship works. We actually think a lot of what we do is a form of social justice. It’s a form of equity that even though we’re really focused on building one on one relationships and relationships for us, kind of underlying value is the idea that we’re trying to create an equitable society where people of all ages can feel valued and respected and welcomed. So to us, it is very much a social justice issue. So I would encourage and challenge people to think about, especially for more causes to think about, you know how intergenerational might be an aspect that’s furthering your costs. So I’ll stop there.
Arielle Galinsky
Absolutely agree, Carol, what are your thoughts?
Carol McCullough
Well, I’ve just been thinking about this, and I am very fortunate in that I moved into a neighborhood that was right next to a university and not too far away from a second university, so I was able to look into offerings that they had. And I feel like if the university is being a good steward of its resources and being responsible as an anchor in the community. They’re going to have programs, and they’re going to have happenings, events and arts, things that are open to the community. So, if you happen to be around a university, that’s a great place to start, because you’ll see lots of younger people there, and we had a community center too that was started by the university. It’s the Dornside Center for university and community partnerships, and I mean right in the name there, they have lots of programs that are welcoming to the members of the community. So just be have your eyes open and your ears to the ground and look for different opportunities and community centers if you want to be around seniors, maybe there’s a senior center somewhere that has some things going on that you could get involved with, yeah.
Arielle Galinsky
Carol, I think that’s such a excellent point in terms of higher education spaces being really opportune place for cogeneration to take place, and often an untapped Space, given the amount of resources and students concentrated in the in that area. And I think we’ll definitely dive into that more into the proximity piece, but really excellent piece of advice. Natalie, what are your thoughts?
Natalie Heller
I’ll kind of answer this question using my experience. And I like, five years ago, I was kind of in this position of I wanted to do something about an issue I cared about, but I just didn’t know how to go about it. I was, I was in high school, so quite young, and what I realized was that being cogenerational meant that I could reach a broader audience, and we could get more voices to come together, versus if I was only talking to other youth, and we went to other generations, not because we couldn’t do it ourselves, but because they were open and happy and willing to help uplift our voice in order for us to reach other people. So, for the example of client activism, there’s this organization called 1000 Grandmas for a Future Generation. And that was super cool, because a lot of young kids don’t really, don’t really talk to a lot of older people, specifically in the youth world and in high school, like a lot of high schoolers are kind of scared of talking to older people, because people might not take our opinion so seriously, or just kind of undercut our experience. And so I guess my biggest advice for people who are in the position of opening their space to youth is like making sure that they know that their values are opinionated, and that they do have, they do have value in their experience and that they’re coming to you because they want to uplift and bring forward some greater issue. And it’s not because they just need you to help and for you to do all the work, but they really want to do the work as well and do it together, which is the most important part. So I guess my advice for youth is to just try and go into different spaces. I know for me, I went to many different spaces, probably where I didn’t really belong formally, but where I would just sit in the back of the room, and sometimes they would disregard me, and sometimes they would ask me about my opinion. So that’s my advice for youth, and then my advice for other generations who are looking to bring in youth is to make sure that they know that they are valued and that they can add to whatever the issue or the problem is or the experience is, because there is value in everything, and that you can learn really from everyone. And if you come within that mindset, then that’s the most important part, is that you can learn things from everyone.
Arielle Galinsky
No, that’s excellent advice. Natalie and I thought, made me think of a report that CoGenerate partnered with actually last year what young leaders want. And one of the one of the findings was related to what you were talking about, Natalie, in the sense that there’s there’s certain stigmas that exist and barriers that exist for young people to want to engage in spaces with older adults, and their reality is that do have to be overcome, and so that mutual acceptance of each other’s ideas is a really critical component to be able to make some of these intergenerational friendships and relationships work. And so I really do appreciate you bringing that up. I want to shift to the prox proximity piece of this. All right, so we spoke about how places of higher education can be a really, potentially strong place for cogeneration to take place, and that’s because of students already being there and older adults in the host communities being locally nearby. I want to pose the question to the group, are there other hidden opportunities, places in your own community, or that you’re aware of, where older and younger individuals are already sharing space, and if not, where have you found the shortest bridge to those spaces? And what advice could that provide for individuals on the call looking to cultivate those spaces in their own communities? And maybe we’ll start with Carol, just to change it up.
Carol McCullough
So definitely, I would say a community centers. Oftentimes, when, when you think of community center, the first thing that pops in my mind is young boys playing basketball, you know, and maybe that not, might not be where I would feel that I would fit in, but there, there are community centers that have programs for variety of age groups. So I would definitely look there. We already said at a university class, classes. Sometimes, if there are any classes that are open to community members there that that don’t have a big, you know, fee to pay, but if there are any free classes available, you might see a variety of different age groups meeting there. Certainly churches people come together to worship. There’s going to be a variety of age groups there. And sometimes they might have an outreach that isn’t strictly for worship, but for fun, fun stuff too. So those are just a few, a few places that I thought of.
Arielle Galinsky
Excellent, Natalie.
Natalie Heller
I agree with Carol. And then some additions that I have is I spent a lot of time in my public library when I was younger, and that was an easy space where older and younger generations were there together. And then a lot of times, at least in San Francisco, there’s. Programming with that. So there’s a lot of mix within that, and then also nonprofits, but also specifically in my experience, like soup kitchen type ones, where I would go every Sunday and I would see the same people there, and I had, I mean, I still know their names, and I still will see them from time to time when I’m back home. So that was a wonderful place, because we were all working for the same thing and working towards the same issue and feeding these people. But that was specifically cool because it was every week, so we got to share that space every week and get to know each other as as people class. Classrooms, as we said, churches, synagogues, stuff like that as well.
Arielle Galinsky
I think religious spaces, and I’ve seen it, I’m seeing in the chat too. I like how everyone’s chiming in. I think religious spaces is certainly a place, time and time again that we see cogeneration naturally happen, and you know, sometimes unrealized, that that’s even occurring, and certainly a place that we can continue looking at as a place where we can grow some of these initiatives in the community. So that was really excellent. Julia, what do you think?
Julie Burkley
Well, a lot of my ideas have already been said, but I did have two others that one is also around schools and also early childhood education programs or day care centers. A lot of times there’s opportunities to volunteer, and then, you know, with the schools, there’s always some after school program or school, kind of organizations that exist around the schools that can be an opportunity. And then my big one that no one has mentioned is pickleball. My pickleball league is the most intergenerational. We have everyone from their 20s to their 80s. So I definitely recommend thinking about kind of that is probably the one activity that I find to be most intergenerational.
Arielle Galinsky
Yeah, certainly there’s been a boom of pickle ball, and I’ve seen a few intergenerational leagues in my own community. And I certainly think that is something that we’ll continue to see growing as well. Now those are all excellent, excellent ideas. I want to shift to the topic of partnership. I think this is a, this is the last of the three Ps, but one that is very critical. You know, I think a lot of intergenerational programs that I’ve seen in in my own life are connecting generations, but sometimes not deliberately, through mutually beneficial relationships. And I think that’s something that here at CoGenerate we, we really take pride in, in the fact that intergenerational relationships can be beneficial for both parties, not just imparting of wisdom or a recipient of a service. And so I would like to ask the group here, and I welcome everyone in the chat as well to post but their own thoughts is, how can we move beyond a traditional mentor, mentee relationship between individuals of different ages to something that’s more reciprocally beneficial for both for both individuals. And if you could share a story of someone engaging in intergenerational work, who potentially set out to teach or to assist, but who ended up gaining just as much by being a part of that relationship, that would be excellent. And Natalie, I’m going to start with you.
Natalie Heller
Yeah, I think, in my experience, the way to move beyond kind of the mentor mentee relationship is, is to make sure that no one has to prove themselves, prove themselves in that they are, that They are like they have enough experience speaking from young people, like they have enough experience to be in the same room. I guess many cases I have to show that I have the knowledge that I can even speak about climate emotions, or climate change or climate activism in general. But the only way I was able to gain experience was because people let me into the rooms anyways, because they saw that there was a benefit for both of us, versus going into rooms where they only want me, because I have all this experience now sort of thing. So it’s understanding that people Yeah, that there’s there’s no hierarchy and experience and stuff like that. And then I guess a story of someone engaging in intergenerational work with me, who was supposed to just be a teacher, but ended up gaining just as much. Is when I was working at the various climate. Summit. We were a totally youth organization, and this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier. And we set out to be led by Youth for Youth, but we realized within that that it is powerful to have yourself represented in what you’re doing, but it’s also super powerful, and potentially even more powerful to combine the two and but to specifically make sure that everyone is equal. So it’s, you have youth on an exact board or and you have youth in, you know, the the higher rooms, not just the ones who are, I don’t know, like for example, if it’s a workshop, you don’t have just the youth introducing people, but you have youth speaking at the intro session, and you have youth within the workshops and presenting it as well, so making sure that they are in every step of the activity, if that makes sense. So my story is, is about the climate summit, is when we’ve had organizations come to teacher assist us youth, but then we’ve realized that actually we are the youth are adding more adding content to them as Well, and that we they’re having to rethink their circles because the youth are adding more to the story. If that makes sense, I don’t know. I’m kind of being very broad here. This is all in the in the context of climate activism in the Bay Area, but, but that’s my story.
Arielle Galinsky
No, I appreciate you sharing that. And Natalie, I think you’re the point that you brought up about CO sharing of power is so critical. So not just a younger person in a you know position of power, merely to have a younger person you know tokenized there, but really in a way that is sharing power equally. And I think you did a explaining in terms of every step of the way, making sure that voices from multi generations are being represented and echoed is a really critical thing that can be kind of brought throughout so many different spaces. And so I think this, this idea of CO sharing of power and influence is really critical. Julia, I’m going to pass it off to you next.
Julie Burkley
Lot of our volunteers, when we first interview them about why they came to us, they say they want to, they want to give back, or they want to help older adults. So they want some purpose, and they end up coming away with probably as much or more from the experience, and I’m going to share two stories, and I hope I won’t go too long, but they’re really they’re give me goose chills, goosebumps after all these years. So one of them was a younger woman, I think she was a millennial, and she was from the LGBTQIA plus community, and she told us during her interview that she didn’t have a relationship with her grandmother, and you know, she did wasn’t accepted by her family because of her queerness. So we matched her with an older adult, and she came back and told us over time that this older adult is the grandmother that she was meant to have, that she feels accepted and not judged, and that the whole relationship has been, quote, life affirming for her, and that the connection is magical, another friendly visiting match we had where they got so The again, the volunteer thought they were, you know, going to do good by volunteering to visit this older adult, and over time, you know, they would start spending time together, have conversations about books and housing policy, news articles. And the volunteer came back and said, how this older adult shared so much about her personal experience in a way that really has helped the volunteer grow her own empathy and her own knowledge and her own understanding of disability and housing rights, and She also said that she also gained skills that were hard to articulate, but they were about developing relationships with people who aren’t family or friends or co workers. So it was about developing a new type of relationship and being able to set boundaries, but also really respecting those boundaries and still building a close relationship. So those are just two examples. And I could go on and on, and we have hundreds of them, of kind of stories our volunteers have told us that what they’ve gotten out of the relationship.
Arielle Galinsky
Wow, those are very powerful. And I definitely. I, I recognize that a lot of students, and in the work that I do to a lot of students join these types of programs thinking that they are giving their time, they are volunteering, and then they come out of it with the realization of a friendship and to all, to all of the to the stories that you share, Julia, something much more, and oftentimes a lot life long, mentorship and takeaway. So I think that’s a really excellent example of how prolonged these relationships can be and how meaningful they can be beyond kind of a uni, uni directional type of relationship. And Carol, I want to pass it off to you, and I also want to encourage all of our audience members to put questions in the chat, as that’s where we will be going into a Q, a next.
Carol McCullough
So I found myself kind of relating to Julie story about the young person who matched up with the grandma figure. Not that I was a grandma figure. I’m not saying that, but in our in our setting, uh, not that long ago, we had a student who came back to us. He started his Co Op experience. So he was no longer in our group because he was working, but he got a chance to come back like over the holidays, and you know, he told us how he missed us and how much he had gained from being in with our group, and he spoke of his grandmother and how he got along with his grandmother, so much better than his parents, but he hadn’t. Since he’d been in college, he hadn’t gotten to see her that much, and he was paired with a woman from our group, and he spoke so highly of her and the relationship that they formed. And he said, it’s, it’s, you know, she’s like, she’s like, my grandma. And that particularly struck me as wonderful, because this guy was a white guy, he identified as being on the autism spectrum, and the grandma figure was this black woman who is a leader in our group, and so their benefits, when, when the different, when the differences are broken down, there’s so much goodness that can come from that and forming the the relationships have serious implications on improving life that you don’t even you don’t even really recognize we’re working on. Another part of what I’m involved in is research, and we’ve done interviews with members who have been with us, like college students, who have graduated and gone on. So we’re getting their impressions. And many of them have said that, well, coming to college first of all was an eye opening experience, coming to the city from wherever they grew up and they were around, you know, people that they that that differ from their community where they grew up And they learned so much. So partnerships can be formed. I think sometimes, if you make an attempt to artificially set up the groupings and make sure that you have someone from each age group, then as people get to know each other, they’ll just blend in together, you know, they’ll just what I’m saying is, as people come together and they learn who they are beyond what they may have seen on TV or what they’ve heard or what their great grandfather told them, because that’s the way things were back in his day. People learn and people grow, and so I don’t know, I’ve been all the way around. I don’t know if I touched what you actually asked, but no, I think,
Arielle Galinsky
I think that was fantastic, and really also brought to surface A. Another reality of some of trying to form cogenerational relationships is everyone’s coming to the table with a different preconception, right? And I think that is something that is a real challenge, sometimes to have to overcome, but to acknowledge it, and to be able to kind of build that bridge of understanding going into these spaces is really so important. So I’m really I’m really grateful to Julia, Carol and Natalie for being here today and for sharing their experiences and their insights, and I want to shift into an opportunity for the audience to share questions. So please continue to put them in the webinar chat. A few have already come in. I got a few anon messages directed to me, so I’m going to start with those questions, but please continue to to put in if any curiosities come up. So I think a real you know this, this, this webinar is all about, how can we practically implement cogenerational initiatives in our everyday life? And I think this is, this is really, this is very important. And so from kind of a programmatic stance, or something that’s a little bit more casual and community oriented. I’m curious if you can all speak to what strategies that you’ve put into place to ensure that a cogenerational connection maintains momentum and to ensure that initiatives that seek to bridge generational divides don’t fizzle out. And if you want to speak to directly an example from your own work, that would be amazing. And I’ll pass it to Julie to start
Julie Burkley
with. Say that, can you repeat the question one more time? Sorry, what
Arielle Galinsky
strategies by the chat? Yeah, no worries. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of good substance in the chat. What substance? What strategies does each of your organizations use to keep the momentum of these intergenerational connections from fizzling out, and ensure you know, long term connections?
Julie Burkley
I think for us, you know, we do a lot of our recruitment. It. Boston area has a ton of universities. So we do, you know, we attend all the volunteer fairs at all the local universities. So we really try to get out to places where people of different generations are. We try to do community events. So it’s about being out there, getting the word out there. We’re experimenting a little bit with some of our social media to try to hopefully change up some of our messaging that will appeal more cross generationally. So those are some of the strategies we use to really try to ensure but I think by naturally, we just get a ton of people from different generations, so making intergenerational matches is really pretty easy for us and doesn’t take a lot of effort just because the nature of our work that we just have. You know, I think over half of our volunteers are under the age of 30.
Arielle Galinsky
Wow. It’s amazing. Natalie, I’ll pass it off to you.
Natalie Heller
One example for from the climate health network is how most of the relationships between the younger generation the older ones. It is a professional relationship, and we’re working on whatever we’re working on. So like all of the youth, we just put out a zine or a magazine. But also we’ve all made it very clear that, like, if anyone needs or everyone is happy to to expand that out into their other parts of their life. So I know for me, I just texted one of my bosses and was like, I was wondering what steps you had to write a book. Has nothing to do with climate Mental Health Network, but it’s just something that I want to do so making sure that the relationships know that you can it’s not just whatever you’re there to do, I guess it’s that they’re really there to help, support in any kind of way, and just like guide you and and for this instant, like impart wisdom, because I don’t know how to do anything in that realm, and I haven’t dabbled there yet, but I think that’s one way to not let it fizzle out, is to make sure that you can, you can go to each other for different things.
Arielle Galinsky
Yeah, that’s great. Carol, what are your thoughts on this?
Carol McCullough
Well, I’m thinking of Writers Room, the main organization that is the founding genesis of all of my involvement. We developed a relationship with a high school that is in the same community as the university. Got to know the principal some of our people. Did student teaching or AmeriCorps volunteering in the school, we developed a relationship that way. And so every year, of course, when you’re dealing with students, they eventually graduate and go other places. But we have that relationship where we can always, you know, call back and try to get new people. So I think developing relationships within the look look to the community where you are and do outreach. Julia mentioned through social media. Sometimes you might have to go old school and just put up a poster, put up a poster in a building. That’s how I got started in writer’s room to begin with, because I saw a message that appealed to me because they were starting a group of writers, and there were two professors from the English and Philosophy Department, and they just put out a call to see who would was interested. And from that one piece of paper, there are two of us who went to that very first meeting 11 years ago and on 11 years now ago. And there’s another woman I know who came in the second year, and she’s still, she’s still with us. So that’s I just say, look, look to your community. If you’re trying to get young people in, go to where they are. They’re in school until they’re 18. So get them there, go to a college or something like that community center, once again, absolutely.
Arielle Galinsky
And I think that that definitely gets to the proximity point of meeting people where they’re at.
Carol McCullough
I know I keep coming back to proximity. Yeah, I think
Arielle Galinsky
it’s an excellent point. It’s why it’s one of the three Ps, actually. So I think it’s great. I want it. There was a question in the chat.
Carol McCullough
proximity was important. Proximity was important for me, because during this whole time that everything was starting, my car broke down, and so I had to get used to traveling by foot, you know. So proximity was very important to me. And as I said, when I first started out, I was so fortunate that I landed right in between two major universities. Yeah, no,
Arielle Galinsky
I think it’s an excellent point and something that we shall consider as we try to kind of create some of these intergenerational programs in our own communities. There was a question in the chat from from Claire. She said she was in high school and is very interested in some of the work and some of the programs that we’re all speaking about on this call. But currently in her community, there is not a lot of opportunities available for this cogenerational activity and for meaningful interactions with older adults. So I want to post to the group any advice on what high schoolers can do in their own communities to create meaningful cogeneration and I’m going to briefly share on this point, I actually started my intergenerational journey when I was in high school, it was I also worked in a senior community at Claire, and I wanted to also foster a stronger relationship. And this led me to conduct interviews, life story interviews of some of the older adults living in the community. And it ended up being a mutual sharing of stories and creating a kind of a final product, which was a written product of some of these stories. And so that’s just one example of a way that you could potentially kind of deepen that connection within your own community. Claire, but I do want to pass it off to Julie, Carol and Natalie, if you have any other thoughts as well.
Julie Burkley
I think a couple things I would suggest is so things that I’ve seen in my community, outside of my organization, is at the high school, there’s someone started a club. It’s called Letters for Rose, and it’s basically writing letters to older adults. They partnered with a nursing home or an assisted living, and they write letters back and forth for older adults. There’s also a partnership with a club, a student run club at the high school with our local access television. And they have done storytelling, like an intergenerational storytelling and these are just ideas that I think they weren’t, you know, sponsored by the school. I think it’s just some passionate kids students who came together and were really excited and willing to put the energy in. I think if you’re willing to bring that energy and passion, and, most importantly, be consistent, that you’re going to make the commitment for however long, then people are really excited. You know, any elder building in your community like affordable housing, they have really slim budgets, so they would love anyone who says, I want to come once a month or twice a month or weekly and do arts and crafts. And whoever comes down, comes down, and then the last thing I would suggest is to talk to every community has a council on aging. And if you go to your council on aging, they almost always have a need for volunteers of all ages to help, do helping or taking people to medical appointments, and some of them also have visiting programs or proposing something to them. I think it’s really just a lot of it is kind of the sky’s the limit. It’s really what you’re willing to imagine and how much energy and time you’re willing to devote to it.
Arielle Galinsky
I think that’s excellent pieces of advice. Carol and Natalie, do you have any thoughts to build on that?
Natalie Heller
Yes. Jill, okay, go ahead, Carol.
Carol McCullough
Oh no, no. Well, I was just going to say quickly. Julie Julia seems to always say something that I’m like, Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s right. But she struck a chord with me and took me back to when I was teaching school. I had a speech class, and for one of their projects around around Christmas time, around the holidays, we did sort of an outreach, and I had them to do these readings, these because we were studying oral in terms. I had them to do these readings. And they they had to do one for young children and one for older adults. And where our high school was located, there was a hospital we were like, right across the street from a hospital and right down the street from a nursing home. So I took them to each of these different places so they could do their individual readings for small groups of different ages of people to get practice with different audiences. And when we finish, we went back and talked about it. And I never will forget, one guy said that when he went to the the senior home, the person that he read to was he didn’t really care so much about what the story was. He just loved having someone there to talk to. And so the things that that I heard from Julie, she they all seem to have something to do with story telling, with stories, with Word, with sharing, you know, and that kind of connection. So for the high school student, you know, I wondered, I don’t remember she said she was a senior or not. But oftentimes they have to, for graduation, they have to devise their own project. And perhaps she could work with another group of like minded students and maybe get permission to make a joint project where they would, as as Julia said, go to a nursing home, or, you know, volunteer like that and share stories. I don’t know,
Arielle Galinsky
Natalie, I hate to cut you short, but we have one minute left of this webinar, and I think we could be talking for hours seriously. There’s been so many there’s so many wonderful questions that have been put in the chat, and so much wonderful conversation too. And I’m happy to see how many ideas have been thrown in there. I do in this last minute together, I would like to just promote the cogen pledge one more time. If you if this is something that resonates with you, if you want to share it more broadly within your communities, please do so there will be a follow up email following this webinar, and the pledge will be included in there. Please feel free to share that with your networks. And before you head out, I put this in the chat, but please put one way that you plan to engage in cogeneration your day to day life. Maybe this is something you already do, maybe this is something you hope to do, but just share a piece of wisdom before heading out. So. That we can all be inspired by the work that you will or already have done. And I want to, yep, go ahead, Duncan. I just
Duncan Magidson
want to want to butt in, because I do want to say, whoops, I got the camera going wrong here. I just wanted to one. I want to launch this poll that we always do at the end of webinars to I want to give Natalie the opportunity to, even if we run a second late, just to chime in here, because I think your voice is so important on this question of what to do as a teen. So if you have to leave, totally understand. But I wanted to give Natalie that extra opportunity.
Natalie Heller
I’ll make this so quick. I was just going to say, sometimes you kind of just have to, like, cold email and email and kind of like email 10 times and then get one response back. The way in my personal life that I found that I have made this was I like to sew. And so there was this sewing group of but youth were not included in it. But I was like, I know how to sew. Would it be possible for me to join? And they were like, of course you can. So sometimes you kind of just got a cold email opportunities like that. If there are none, Create one with friends or with your parents or your neighborhood. I know we like in my neighborhood, we have a bunch of block parties, so that’s a great way for me to talk to my older neighbors and be like, do you knit? I knit. Let’s start a knitting club, stuff like that. So sometimes you got to initiate that, or sometimes you just got a cold calling and see what what you can join in on.
Arielle Galinsky
Block parties are an awesome place for cogeneration. Well, thank you, Julia, Carol and Natalie for being a part of this call, for offering so many beautiful insights and some tangible walk aways for myself and for everyone who joined in on today’s conversation. Very grateful to be able to share this space with you, and I hope everyone has a wonderful evening and thank you for joining tonight’s webinar.