There’s something exciting — and often inspiring — about intergenerational relationships, as anyone who was close to a grandparent growing up can attest. Hanging out with someone decades older, or younger, can expand our sense of possibility and perspective. It’s moving to witness in others, as I found when watching an 11-year-old musician play alongside a bandmate 60 years his senior at the Heart of Los Angeles’ Eisner Intergenerational Orchestra. Try not to tear up yourself as Brandi Carlile cries while singing “Both Sides Now” with Joni Mitchell. Age integration is also a key to solving some of today’s global challenges, as intergenerational innovator Marc Freedman has often said.
Freedman is a leader, or perhaps the leader, in the growing intergenerational movement, which seeks to tap the strengths of people from different generations for the benefit of both and of society. The organization he founded, CoGenerate, an offshoot of his earlier nonprofit, Encore.org, has been a frequent grantee of the Eisner Foundation, the largest single philanthropy solely focused on intergenerational work, as we’ve written before. (The nonprofit also received $3 million from MacKenzie Scott under its old name, in 2020.) Freedman also has written five books, including the 2018 title “How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations,” which The Wall Street Journal named one of that year’s best books on aging well.
As Freedman has said, “The United States today has so much age segregation that it has been described as existing in a state of ‘age apartheid.’” His organization and the funders behind it support age integration, and the new possibilities this brings. As he put it, “These groups can do together what no generation can do alone. We now know that there is deep, pent-up demand on the part of older and younger people to do just that.”
IP covered the launch of CoGenerate’s CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity last year, funded by a $700,000 grant from Ares Charitable Foundation, and in January, we covered the announcement of its 10 winners, who each received $20,000 and six months of peer and professional coaching and support. At the time, the winning organizations were just about to start their grant year. CoGenerate, meanwhile, was looking for funding for its next cogenerational challenge, to be focused on loneliness and social isolation.
We caught up with Freedman to find out how the winners of last year’s CoGen Challenge have fared, if the new challenge found its funding, and what’s new in age integration now.
What’s happening with the 10 winners of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity? How did that cohort turn out?
I’m happy to report that two of the winners, Mariela Briceno of Venprendedoras, and Lyiam Galo, of United Way of Santa Barbara, were recently selected to continue their work bringing generations together through the Eisner Foundation’s second class of Fellows (an award of $50,000 each). And Lewis Bernstein, a fellow in an earlier class, was just named one of the $100,000 winners of the Young Futures innovation competition for his SWAN 3G Mentoring initiative, bringing older Sesame Workshop alums together with high school students and preschoolers in a mentoring initiative that benefits all three groups.
Have you found funding for the 2025 CoGen Challenge, and will it still be focused on bringing generations together to combat the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation in our nation?
We’re shifting the characterization from a focus on “challenge” to “solutions,” so it will be CoGen Solutions to Social Isolation and Loneliness. We’re doing a community of practice instead of a cash prize. We’re hoping to have approximately 100 innovators in the community, which opens the aperture for a wider array of solutions. The RRF Foundation on Aging is underwriting this new initiative, which we just announced on July 24. Applications for the community of innovators are open through September 6. As our team put it [about this shift], “In addition to reaching more people, we believe the Community of Practice will help us better identify the members of a cohort who will rise above, become champions, adopt cogeneration as part of their mission, and be eager to partner with us and expand.”
It’s hard to think of a better place for a cogenerational solution. New research suggests a “loneliness curve”— isolation and disconnection peaks among the young and the old. This initiative aims at turning older and young people from primary victims of loneliness to agents of change fostering connection for people of all ages.
What’s something exciting you’re seeing on the age integration front?
The Emmy nominations were just announced, and once again they were dominated by three shows that help explore the potential of cross-generational connection and collaboration: “Hacks,” “Only Murders in the Building,” and “Reservation Dogs.” In various ways they tell a story of characters from different generations thrown together, often reluctantly, in order to save each other’s careers or solve a problem. They come to appreciate their interdependence in the process and manage to do something more along the way: forge a deep bond. There’s a cultural revolution that’s helping us see a different set of possibilities.
Anyone who watched the Grammys this past year would have seen an equally powerful display, with Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs stealing the show with their duet on “Fast Car,” followed by Brandi Carlile and Joni Mitchell’s collaboration. That’s what cogeneration looks like — and sounds like. Pop culture is telling a new story about the power of generations together.
Do you see philanthropy embracing the benefits of age integration with the same enthusiasm that pop culture is?
I think these stories come with a challenge: how do we realize on the ground, what’s being depicted in the air — or literally, “on the air.” That’s a challenge for funders, who are often too siloed by age — youth funders, aging funders — to work in ways that address the interdependence of an age-diverse population.
One of the founders of the National Institute of Aging, Matilda White Riley, described the phenomenon of “structural lag,” an idea that sounds very formal but really means that as our society ages–and becomes more age diverse — it often takes time for the central institutions to catch up. That’s certainly been the case with philanthropy.
You’ve been at the forefront of thinking about longevity and our society for more than two decades. You founded Encore.org with its focus on meaning and purpose in the latter half of life, which now everyone talks about. You then saw and pivoted to the untapped need for and value of intergenerational interaction. What’s on your mind about longevity now?
I’m increasingly convinced that we’re missing two of the most important features of the new demographic and social landscape. Yes, people are living longer. And yes, it is true that societies across the globe — including American society — are aging. By some estimates half the children born in the developed world since 2000 will see their hundredth birthday.
Less well appreciated is how these, and other trends, are contributing to unprecedented age diversity. Already in the U.S., a quarter of the population is under 20, and a quarter is over 60. According to the Stanford Center on Longevity, we’ve got roughly the same number of people alive at every age from zero to 75. We’re not appreciating what may be the biggest demographic shift related to aging — this age diversity.
Similarly, we’re failing to recognize a problem facing our now-historically age diverse society — radical age segregation, what some have called “age apartheid.” The systematic separation of generations, especially the young and the old, is fanning ageism, misunderstanding, conflict and isolation. It is every bit as much a missed opportunity to combine the talents of people from different age groups.
Which brings us back to CoGenerate’s efforts to bring different generations together. What are some new things you’re working on that people might not know about yet?
At CoGenerate, we’re trying to elevate and catalyze big game changing-ideas, including very simple, straightforward ones, and to do so at places where funders and other investors are likely to be paying attention. I recently returned from the Aspen Ideas Health festival where I had the chance to make the case for two such ideas. The first [is] a Cogenerational Service Corps, where older and younger persons could serve side by side, seeded by our Generations Serving Together initiative, funded by the Einhorn Collaborative. And the other — this is a little out there — is an early year of Social Security for older people to return to school, kind of a GI Bill for the over-50 group, one that would go a long way to age-integrating higher education in America.
So, people over 50 could go back to school for free?
The core idea is that individuals over 50 could take an early year of Social Security to return to school, either for a degree or retraining — in return for delaying the start of Social Security payments for a year. This idea was developed in a paper on social security innovation that I did with Debra Whitman, the head of public policy at AARP.
What other initiatives are you working on at CoGenerate?
We are launching a new initiative funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, which has an interest in how religion can be a source of social solutions. This initiative is aimed at congregations and other religious institutions as a force for generational bridging. What institution is more closely tied to the cycle of life, and in a better position to create both intergenerational solidarity and a sense of the wholeness of life than faith organizations.
Oh, also I can’t remember if I mentioned this when we last talked, but I’m developing a new program at Yale called the Experienced Leaders Initiative (Yale ELI Fellows). Older leaders will go back to school to help launch a new chapter in their contributing life focused on social impact. Some key features of the program differentiate it from other peer programs like Harvard’s ALI or Stanford’s DCI: It will be a fraction of the cost because it’s a hybrid model, blending online learning and on campus time. It will be highly cogenerational, with co-mentoring opportunities with young changemakers, and it will blend intellectual exploration with hands-on Encore Fellow-like experiences. Kind of a co-op ed model like Northeastern and Drexel are doing for undergrads, but for grown-ups!
Finally, with planning support from the Eisner Foundation — and inspiration from its HOLA intergenerational orchestra, big band and choir in L.A. — we’re designing something we’re calling “Generations Got Talent.” It will be helping older and younger duets in multiple musical genres find an audience. There will likewise be an organizational innovation contest that will elevate community programs across the country using music to build understanding and joy across generations. We’re still designing the initiative, which will debut in 2025, and most likely culminate in a live event that will also be streamed.
What other organizations are doing interesting, intergenerational work you’d like to highlight?
I’ve been heartened by Ashoka’s New Longevity project which has attracted an array of funders across the globe. I had the privilege of being part of their Summit a couple of years ago, which highlighted an array of innovations focused on bringing generations together. Among them [is] the Friendship Bench, created by Dr. Dixon Chibanda from Zimbabwe, engaging the wisdom of grandmothers to help counsel young women facing mental health challenges in a country with a dozen psychiatrists. Since then, Mackenzie Scott and others have invested significantly in the expansion of the Friendship Bench globally.
There’s Bill McKibben’s Senior to Senior project which is mobilizing “seniors” — older people — to register high school seniors to vote.
Another favorite project, Cycling Without Age from Denmark, which uses a specially designed bicycle to combat loneliness among elders and to bring generations together, [is] a project that has also attracted new sources of funding, including an investment from the Fit for Life Foundation. A bicycle and a bench [are] such simple, reproducible ideas for furthering generational solidarity and support.
Cycling Without Age sounds like an intergenerational version of that old song “Bicycle Built for Two.”
“Bicycle Built for Two Generations.”
