Meeting the Multigenerational Moment
March 15, 2021
By Stefanie Weiss, Encore.org
This article was originally published on the Encore.org website, and is posted below with permission.
“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 essay 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 — will 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.
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:
- Click here, then click “follow the series.” You’ll get an email from SSIR when each new article is published.
- Connect with others who care about these issues by adding comments at the end of each essay.
- Spread the word on your social media channels — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — using this digital toolkit.
- And make sure you’re following Encore.org, a national nonprofit bridging generational divides, and The Eisner Foundation, the nation’s only foundation funding solely intergenerational work, on email and social media.
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!