A first step for such collaboration is to convene conversations, dialogues and discussions that will do the following:
Lead to a better understanding about age differences and commonalities;
Increase awareness of the varied understandings of social problems;
Provide opportunities/solutions to address these same problems. These informal engagements will take time and several meetings to develop trust and creative ideas.
Purpose: The ultimate purpose of this roundtable project is to demonstrate that making a conscious and intentional effort to engage multiple generations in thinking about, researching and discussing various social sector problems can yield breakthrough ideas and greater social order and connection among generations.
Method: A group of Encore activists representing the 50+ age cohort and a group of activists from CIRKEL representing the 21-49 age cohort will come together to run a series of monthly Roundtable Discussions to help build a new model of intergenerational collaboration.
The group will be designed with an equal number of participants to generally represent age groups from 20 to 80 years. It will consist of 12-14 people in total to allow for a slippage that brings 10-12 people together for each monthly session. The sessions will last one and a half to two hours On Zoom.
The group will designate one member for each session to design and facilitate the session. The topics will be agreed upon with a vote of the group at the first session of the Roundtable. Topics suggested by members will promote the new narrative that intergenerational collaboration is most effective in addressing social-sector problem solutions. The topics will be voted on to create a slate for a year’s activity. The leader for each session will present a research overview on the topic and a set of questions to frame the discussion among the other participants. Each session will conclude with a summary of the insights of the group, noting especially where the intergenerational exchange generates new approaches for problem solving.
A Secretary from the group will maintain contact and scheduling of the sessions. A member of the roundtable will be asked to record and document the discussion with outcome resolutions for each session. The summaries will be distilled into a guide for future similar efforts among intergenerational groups.
With the success of these series of discussion, the group will identify potential social projects of mutual interest with active program development and potential funding. These could be shared with various program providers for consideration. It is important to give the dialogue work enough time to develop a solid, trusting working partnership among the older and younger participants.
At the end of one year, with modest support from Cogenerate, the year’s work will be summarized for distribution assuming alignment with Co-generate’s mission.