DAC celebrates success of Intergenerational Program

June 24, 2016 · 0 Comments

By Marni Walsh

The Dufferin Arts Council (DAC) celebrated the success and conclusion of the Intergenerational Memoir Program, “Bridging the Gap”, this month with seniors and students at Shelburne and Orangeville elementary schools.

This year, the program involved 18 senior citizens meeting with over 50 Grade Seven and Grade Eight students from Hyland Heights E.S. in Shelburne and Credit Meadows P.S. in Orangeville.

It ran from the last week of March to early May, with seniors meeting weekly with small groups of students to tell their personal history. Students, in turn, listened and learned, asking questions and recording their senior partner’s story.

Ken Topping, the Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee for the Dufferin Arts Council (DAC,) says the Arts Council is acting as a facilitator for the Bridging the Gap Intermediate Intergenerational Memoir Program as part of DAC’s literary component for the arts in local schools.

The purpose of the Memoir Program is to foster cooperation, understanding and friendship between the generations with an aim at impacting young attitudes towards the elderly, while facilitating a deeper understanding of the past. For the seniors, the program promotes “feelings of life-satisfaction and self-worth.”

The work was facilitated by Donna Henderson, Steve Baker and Ann McMillan, all members of the Dufferin Arts Council.

“The bond between the kids and the seniors becomes so strong that in every session, over the last three years, seniors have been invited to see their students’ graduation,” said Mr. Baker.

The intergenerational program was created by Nora Zylstra-Savage of Storylines, “a Social Purpose Business organization that promotes personal self-worth and community appreciation of individual life stories and experiences.”

Initially funded by a New Horizons federal seniors’ grant, this year DAC received funding for the program from the Association of Retired Teachers of Ontario.

“The seniors tell their story and the students create the written work in a scrap book format which is gifted to the senior as a fond memory of this experience,” says Mr. Topping.

Seniors gratefully accepted their memory books from the students at the closing celebrations May 24 and June 7 and, in turn, presented the students with a framed photograph of their group.

The program was extremely successful for senior volunteers and their partner students, says Mr. Topping.

“It is a significant experience for a student to work with the seniors and write their history,” he says, “It is a meeting of two different eras.”

Comments from the senior partners included the sentiment that, after spending time with their students, they knew “the future was in good hands.”