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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...
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Illustration by Gracia Lam
“Brilliant inventors and good intentions created one age-segregated institution after another—preschools, high schools, senior centers, and assisted-living facilities—as the generations increasingly came to inhabit entirely separate spheres.”
— Marc Freedman & Trent Stamp, SSIR
Social innovation got us into this mess. Can social innovation get us out?
Today, the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), an award-winning and influential magazine and website, launched “Meeting the Multigenerational Moment,” a series of 13 essays that will answer that question — and put the field of intergenerational innovation on the map.
Published in partnership with Encore.org and The Eisner Foundation, the series shines a light on some of the most promising innovations that bring older and younger people together to solve some of our most pressing problems.
Encore.org CEO Marc Freedman and Eisner Foundation CEO Trent Stamp are the authors of the first essay in the series, “Overcoming Age Segregation.” The two experts explain how we got so divided, then call on social innovators to “be as creative in bringing people together across ages as we’ve been about splitting them apart.”
The other essays — written by a mix of social entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and philanthropic leaders — focus on intergenerational strategies to help meet critical needs like affordable housing, K-3 literacy, mentoring, support for foster families, connection, funding, and so much more. You can find the other essays that have already been published here:
Every Monday, from now through early June, SSIR will post a new essay, plus a new illustration created by the very talented Gracia Lam.
To make sure you don’t miss a thing:
This series, as Freedman and Stamp write, is for “all those who believe fresh thinking and new social arrangements hold the potential to make the most of the multigenerational society already upon us.”
Hope that includes you!