About Intergenerational Communities

Commonly, the phrase “It takes a village” is completed with “to raise a child,” the obvious meaning being that all members of a community have a role to play in the successful maturation and “coming of age” of that child into adulthood. The unspoken and often forgotten part of that process is the impact, purpose and meaning enjoyed by the members of the village in raising that child. 

“A society of all ages is multi-generational. It is not fragmented, with youth, adults and older persons going separate ways. Rather, it is age-inclusive, with different generations recognizing-and acting upon their commonality of interest.”  Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, 1999.

Intentional intergenerational communities came into being over a decade ago. At this time, there is only one completed community with three more working on their full plan and has not become an actual site. Brenda Eheart and Martha Power at the University of Illinois spent time researching what happened to “unadoptable” children and adolescents who spend their entire youth being bounce from one foster home to another. Eheart and Power found that the adopting parents were often not equipped to deal with such deeply troubled or chronically ill young children. It wasn’t because these families didn’t want to do the right thing, but they lacked the necessary knowledge and support to succeed. (Power, Eheart, Racine, and Karnik, 2007).
 
Eheart and a group of like-minded friends developed a vision for an entire community built around these children. Their dream was to create a place where children deemed to be less adoptable to due emotional issues and because older children are not adopted as easily, would be adopted by caring parents who would themselves be supported by one another, a small staff, as well as backup elder guardians.
 
Their research was the driving force behind their community in Rantoul, Illinois.  What emerged from their research was a program model that binds an improbable collection of strangers (foster children, families, staff, and seniors) into a new a pragmatic organizational form, one that buffers the risks and enhances the rewards of collectively caring for adoptive families of special needs children (Hopping, 2001). Hope Meadows in Rantoul, Illinois was formed.

It Takes a Village Boulder (ITAVB); an intergenerational community in Boulder Colorado will look a lot like Hope Meadows in Rantoul, Illinois. ITAVB is aware that the isolated families without the support of a community, is not the best way to raise special need children, or truly any children in our society.  ITAVB also knows that older adults represent an expanding but still mostly untapped national resource. Even though the community is built around a social issue of creating a nurturing environment for foster care children and older adults, they are not problems to solves, but people coming together to help each other. 

There are daunting social issues that ITAVB will be able to help.  Gathered statistics show the need for a new approach in creating involved caring community in the present and the future nationally in foster care in 2007. In Colorado, there are more than 6,000 children in the foster care system and 3000 children waiting for adoption (2007). In 2005, National statistics show that there are 37.3 million people that are over the age of 60, and by 2030 the figure jumps to 77 million seniors. In Colorado by 2015 there will be 7.3 million people over the age of 60,20and by 2030 there will be 10.5 million (2005).  And with this increase of these sectors of our population, life expectancy is increasing, birth rates are slowing, and the structure of the family with more single parents, mobility issues, changes in diversity and cultures, the explosion of drug use, economics recession is changing the face of the nuclear family (Bengston, 2001).   

ITAVB will combine overworked foster-adopt families, limited income seniors, a minimal professional staff, and foster children that all parental rights have been severed.  It will be a licensed adoption agency, a family neighborhood, a social service center, a housing project and will have a sustainable large base of volunteers.

References

Bengston, V.L. (2001). Beyond the nuclear family: The increasing importance of multigenerational bonds. In Andrus Gerontology Center (chap.4, p609). Retrieved November 8, 2008, from http:// books.google.com/books.

Erheart, B.K., Hopping, D., Power, M.B. and Racine, D. (2005). Intergenerational community as intervention. Champaign, IL: Generations of Hope Development Corporation.

Hopping, David (2001) Hope Meadows: In the Service of an Ideal. Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 23, Nos.9/10, pp.683-690.

US Census Date File. (2007) Washington DC: US Census. Available from http://census.gov/Press-