Deepening Intergenerational Partnerships in Community Work

To help advance com­mu­ni­ty-led solu­tions that improve the lives of young peo­ple and their fam­i­lies, the Annie E. Foun­da­tion launched an inter­gen­er­a­tional learn­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive of com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions in 2022. Now in its sec­ond phase, the col­lab­o­ra­tive is test­ing strate­gies for strength­en­ing the role of young peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ty change efforts.

Dur­ing an Insta­gram Live con­ver­sa­tion, record­ed on Oct. 29, 2024, Casey’s Traci Broady spoke with Jas­mine Bernard and Eritrea Temes­ghen from BRIDGES USA, an orga­ni­za­tion that serves as a tech­ni­cal assis­tance provider for the col­lab­o­ra­tive. They shared more about the col­lab­o­ra­tive and high­light­ed best prac­tices to cre­ate equi­table part­ner­ships between youth and adults in orga­ni­za­tions and communities.

Watch the con­ver­sa­tion on Instagram

The inter­gen­er­a­tional learn­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive com­pris­es Casey grantees, part­ners and com­mu­ni­ty groups. The col­lab­o­ra­tive works in phas­es to bet­ter under­stand and improve youth-adult part­ner­ships that engage in com­mu­ni­ty change efforts. Insights from the col­lab­o­ra­tive will be used to devel­op tools and resources cov­er­ing top­ics such as nav­i­gat­ing pro­duc­tive con­flict, address­ing gen­er­a­tional bar­ri­ers and youth com­pen­sa­tion that will help refine the Foundation’s grant mak­ing strat­e­gy and sup­port the broad­er field of inter­gen­er­a­tional com­mu­ni­ty change work.

Cur­rent par­tic­i­pants in the col­lab­o­ra­tive include:

• CLIA, Bal­ti­more, Maryland
• Gente Orga­ni­za­da, Pomona, California
• The Light­house | Black Girl Projects, Jack­son, Mississippi
• Voic­es for Virginia’s Chil­dren, Rich­mond, Virginia

Over 18 months, the four orga­ni­za­tions will imple­ment guides, tools and eval­u­a­tion prac­tices to improve their organization’s youth engage­ment and out­comes for youth and fam­i­lies in their communities.

The cur­rent phase of the learn­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive builds on lis­ten­ing and learn­ing ses­sions with an inter­gen­er­a­tional selec­tion of Casey grantees and part­ners with exper­tise in youth-adult part­ner­ships. The group met over two years to iden­ti­fy key areas essen­tial for design­ing and imple­ment­ing inter­gen­er­a­tional engage­ment and co-cre­ate resources to be test­ed by orga­ni­za­tions look­ing to start or strength­en their inter­gen­er­a­tional com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment efforts. Feed­back from the orga­ni­za­tions test­ing the resources will be used to final­ize a tool kit for com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions, local gov­ern­ments, fun­ders and com­mu­ni­ty leaders.

Learn about the ear­ly lessons from this inter­gen­er­a­tional engage­ment effort