I’ve heard the question so many times from people interested in cogenerational programming: “Are young people really going to show up to connect with older people?” We know, from our nationally representative study with NORC at the University of Chicago in 2022, that...
Purpose Prize
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Want to Recruit Younger People? Look Within
For the past five years, I’ve been working as an advocate for the causes I believe in and for more intergenerational collaboration. Young people like me want more opportunities to work across generations for change, but we also want to be treated as equals. To...
What Young Leaders Want — And Don’t Want — From Older Allies
We know from our nationally representative study with NORC at the University of Chicago in 2022 that 76% of Gen Z and 70% of Millennial respondents wish they had more opportunities to work across generations for change. In a new report, What Young Leaders Want — And...
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Jane Roberts
Purpose Prize Fellow 2008
Supporting family planning and reproductive health for women in the developing world.
In 2002, Jane Roberts, a retired California teacher, and Lois Abraham, a New Mexico lawyer, were both angered to learn that President George Bush had decided to withhold $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Independently, they decided to appeal to fellow Americans to donate one dollar at a time to make up the amount the government was withholding from UNFPA. Roberts and Abraham jointly founded 34 Million Friends, a grassroots movement that aims to get 34 million people to donate $1 each to support UNFPA and its work. Grassroots fundraising and advocacy, initially spearheaded by both women and now led by Roberts, is an “exercise in outraged democracy,” according to Roberts. 34 Million Friends has raised almost $4 million from hundreds of thousands of individuals and donors to support UNFPA’s family planning and reproductive health care programs in 150 countries around the world. Funds have paid for an operating room in Bamako, Mali; emergency obstetrical care equipment in East Timor; and safe birthing kits for health centers worldwide. “I have always felt a deep commitment to women, their lives, choices, rights and responsibilities. This was the one thing I wanted to concentrate on in my retirement. So I feel very lucky to be able to devote myself to this cause in my later years.”