TIME
FOR A CHILDREN'S MOVEMENT
Wingspread Journal, Winter 1997
BONDS THAT BUILD: AN INTERGENERATIONAL
STRATEGY FOR COMMUNITY
by Eric Kingson, Jack Cornman, and Judith Kline
Leavitt
Intergenerational approaches to advancing the common
good are hardly new. Almost by definition, an inclusive
civic community draws on and serves people of all
ages and is committed to the well-being and positive
development of its children. The education of children
and young adults--the next generation of parents,
teachers, and workers--requires public and private
investments and support of families and communities.
Social Security draws on resources of working persons
to protect themselves and their families against the
risks of disability, death, and retirement while also
providing basic security for today's older persons,
disabled workers, and surviving children. The Civil
Rights movement of the 1960s, the Peace Corps, religious
institutions, and PTAs are all examples of intergenerational
approaches. Indeed, the history of human progress
is the story of each generation building on what has
come before and passing on knowledge and resources
to those who follow.
The need to develop a more formal intergenerational
approach to building community is becoming increasingly
evident, however, as the sense of community in our
nation declines at both the local and national levels.
During the past 25 years, hundreds of successful intergenerational
community programs and models--increasingly based
on research and documented by evaluations--have emerged.
Beginning in the late 1960s, for example, federally-funded
foster grandparent programs and retired senior volunteer
programs began to connect elder volunteers with children
in schools, in social agencies serving children with
severe disabilities, and in hospitals.
In the early 1970s, grassroots efforts to bring
elders into the lives of children were prevalent in
schools across the country. Schools in Ann Arbor,
Mich., used art as a medium to connect generations.
In the late 1970s, a University of Pittsburgh program
began disseminating elementary and secondary-school
curricula designed to bridge generational separation
and stereotypes.
Today, intergenerational interventions have become
more sophisticated, finding ways to focus volunteer
energy on some of the nation's most persistent social
problems, often utilizing one of the nation's great
untapped resources--the growing older population.
A Temple University program called Across Ages links
elder, inner-city residents as mentors to at-risk
youth in Philadelphia, Penn., and Springfield, Mass.
Baltimore's "Experience Corps" engages elders as
tutors, teacher aids, mentors for children (and in
some cases their parents), and in roles that encourage
parental involvement and facilitate service-learning
in their inner-city neighborhood schools.
Elsewhere, children and youth join with elders and
others to address community problems through intergenerational
forums and action projects. In Washington state, the
Seattle-King County Generations United forges a coalition
among the advocates of young and old to provide support
for grandparents raising grandchildren. And the Coalition
of Wisconsin Aging Groups, a statewide elder advocacy
organization, explores ways of incorporating an intergenerational
perspective into its legislative priorities.
The lessons are clear. Intergenerational approaches:
-
benefit participants of all ages;
-
are effective--often more effective than other approaches
in responding to certain community needs and challenges;
and
-
can become important strategies for helping to build
caring, inclusive, and engaged communities.
Strategies for Strengthening
Community
A body of knowledge and experience now exists to
move the intergenerational approach from a collection
of projects to a more formal strategy for strengthening
communities and for improving the quality of people's
lives.
Developing such a strategy was the task of a recent
Wingspread conference. The goal of the conference
was to assess intergenerational approaches and programs
as means to strengthen community and foster engagement
of adults in the lives of children. The results moved
the intergenerational policy and program concept from
an eclectic collection of approaches, sometimes ends
in themselves, towards a more comprehensive strategy,
with a vision, goals, and proposed initiatives.
This was the second national Wingspread conference
on intergenerational programs, the first held 16 years
ago. The 1980 conference helped forge a common purpose
among those early developers and leaders of intergenerational
programs, and set the stage for the creation of Generations
United, the intergenerational coalition whose leadership
includes the American Association of Retired Persons,
Children's Defense Fund, Child Welfare League of America,
and National Council on Aging.
The 1996 conference raised new challenges for intergenerational
practitioners, researchers, and organizations seeking
to strengthen community through intergenerational
approaches. These challenges include: development
of new and even more effective programs and approaches,
expanded efforts to foster the spread and growth of
intergenerational programs, participation in local
and national discussions of critical intergenerational
policy issues, and potential new roles.
Future Directions
By laying out specific goals and activities for
themselves and their colleagues, Wingspread conference
participants identified what is needed to take the
intergenerational approach to the next stage. For
example, they called for participating organizations
and others to explore private and public avenues and
resources for:
- Expanding
intergenerational service and citizen participation
opportunities through corporate sponsorship
of community service of employees and skill banks,
expansion of service-learning opportunities in K-12
levels, forgiveness of student debt in exchange
for national service, and dissemination of intergenerational
volunteer service models.
- Further
testing and disseminating of the best intergenerational
practices, leading to creation of a national
clearing-house for program information and technical
assistance.
- Encouraging
intergenerational activism by building or strengthening
state and local intergenerational coalitions, involving
elder organizations in advocacy on behalf of children,
and by developing local and state legislative agendas
around common concerns of young and old in strengthening
public schools, higher education, and basic services.
- Developing
a positive intergenerational presence in local,
state, and federal public policy discussions
of education, entitlements, and health care, by
creating speakers (and media contact) pools of elders
and youth, developing model materials that reframe
the intergenerational conflict message, and by initiating
an intergenerational town meeting forum strategy.
- Establishing
an intergenerational public policy institute
to provide sound and timely information on selected
critical issues (such as grandparents raising grandchildren)
to networks of intergenerational practitioners,
activists, and decision and opinion makers.
Achieving a "good society"
The difference between the two Wingspread conferences
sums up the development of the intergenerational approach
to building communities and meeting important societal
needs. Carol Tice, president of Lifespan Resources,
who convened the first meeting and attended the second,
described that difference: "In 1980, the emphasis
was on setting an agenda that would foster and sustain
intergenerational programs. In 1996, our discussions
were not about intergenerational programs per se,
but about how intergenerational programs and policy
perspectives were integral parts of a strategy to
build a caring society in which all generations are
served.
"As such, intergenerational approaches are now not
just ends in themselves, but have become vehicles
for achieving a good society."
THE PROMISE OF INTERGENERATIONAL
STRATEGIES
Intergenerational strategies hold promise for helping
to answer three critical societal challenges: disconnection
of young activists from the past, the future roles
of older persons in an aging society, and the pitting
of young against old.
Paul Loeb, author of Generations at a Crossroad,
explored factors affecting the involvement of today's
college students. He notes that today's young people
have not had access to histories of past social reform
struggles, such as women's suffrage, the New Deal,
and the Civil Rights movement. Engagement of older
persons as conveyors of such traditions can help the
young to place themselves in the stream of social
change efforts, tempering impatience with more practiced
idealism, challenging cynicism with a legacy of hope.
According to Msgr. Charles J. Fahey, of Fordham
University, the "Third Age," or elder years, is a
new period in the human life course. Parenting and
economic activity recede (or cease) as primary and
defining activities. In addition to the economic and
health-care questions associated with an aging population,
as individuals and as a society we are faced with
the tasks of finding meaning in the gift of added
years, sorting out the rights and obligations of each
generation, and tapping the energies of the old on
behalf of the young.
Perhaps the most disturbing challenge to collaborative
intergenerational strategies comes from efforts to
pit generations against each other in public policy
arenas. Richard Leone, president of the Twentieth
Century Fund, warns that the aging of the baby boom
cohorts is being marketed as a demographic crisis
leading to "generational warfare" and as a rationale
for privatizing Social Security and Medicare. While
such charges and proposals mask the real problems
of growing inequality and economic insecurity in the
American economy, Leone points out that privatization
may further erode the security of many American families,
especially those with moderate and low incomes.
This article also appeared in "Together," the Generations
United newsletter.
Eric Kingson is associate professor at Boston
College Graduate School of Social Work. Jack Cornman
is a partner with Consultants on Purpose in Arlington,
Va., and Judith Kline Leavitt is director of Generations
United in Washington, DC.
"2000 and Beyond: Building an Action Plan for
the Intergenerational Movement" was sponsored by Generations
United and The Johnson Foundation, with support from
the Helen Bader Foundation, NYNEX Foundation, The
Retirement Research Foundation, and The Travelers
Foundation.
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