If you’re craving something we can all agree on in these “Divided States of America,” as Time magazine has renamed our country, we’ve got something right here in Boston — a path to heal the divides and reverse the pernicious inequality that is driving them.
It’s all about activating a valuable resource hiding in plain sight — older adults of all races and income levels with experience and interest in improving the future for young people.
Throughout our city, adults 50 and older are stepping up and standing up for children and youth, and not just in their own families. They are building bridges across age, income, and class.
Phil Waters, one of the first African-Americans hired by Verizon (then New York Telephone) in the 1960s, now works part-time for Generations Inc., recruiting and training volunteers to be literacy tutors.
“As I began serving at the Martin Luther King School,” Waters said, “I began to really understand how much the children needed our support to increase their reading level. It’s great to be needed.”
And there are many more older adults who feel the same way.
Jim, a 71-year-old retired accountant, spends five hours each week — alongside other volunteers Waters recruits — with Dorchester kindergartners at the Richard J. Murphy K-8 School, helping them learn to read.
After retiring early, Richard Johnstin “re-purposed” his life by becoming a Playworks recess coach at the West Somerville Neighborhood School.
Fran Moyer, a retired high school English teacher, works at ReServe Greater Boston with families from Chelsea’s Browne Middle School, helping parents and children see college in their futures.
Tim House, a former actor, theater director and college teacher, volunteers with 826 Boston, leading storytelling and bookmaking field trips and coaching young, rising authors to tell their stories.
Generations Inc., 826 Boston, Playworks and ReServe are some of the programs pulling together under a new umbrella, Generation to Generation Boston, to get more nonprofits and schools to engage more older adults to help young people thrive. The group launched last week with support from the Boston Foundation, which sees older adults as key to building nonprofit capacity to serve more kids.
Collaborating with leaders in Los Angeles, Seattle and San Jose and scores of youth-serving programs around the nation, Gen2Gen Boston is part of a five-year national campaign to engage at least 1 million adults age 50-plus to devote their time, talent and experience to help young people thrive.
It seems like common sense, matching older people, with time and experience to give, with younger people in need of more role models and one-on-one attention. If we all work together, we can make it common practice right here in Boston.
Phyllis N. Segal, vice president of Encore.org, directs strategic partnerships for the Generation to Generation campaign. For more information go to generationtogeneration.org. “As You Were Saying” is a regular Herald feature. We invite readers to submit guest columns of no more than 600 words. Email to oped@bostonherald.com. Columns are subject to editing and become Herald property.
