with sorry for that little pause there bridges together together dog hi i'm maggie rose and i'm your host today for what's going on and joining us today is andrea weaver to rid our bridges together yes thank you and  andrea runs and founded this organization that works on intergenerational programs and she's here to define that for us and tell us about some of the programs and one that's currently very active here in belmont and yeah please tell us a little bit about it so intergenerational programs are programs that bring the book and generations our older adults and children together for meaningful exchanges together  it is wonderful because this is something i really believe is important and what got you started in it i grew up in an italian family multigenerational actually my family had immigrated from italy and settled here in belmont and watertown and so i grew up living presence here from ones that my maternal grandparents and i knew all their siblings and their families and i spent a lot of my summers in italy with my other set of grandparents and so i just lived in this intergenerational community and family and network when i was studying for my bachelor's degree i took a class in age and i learned that only five percent of older adults live in nursing homes and with family ok yeah and that in that effect that statistics important because it represents that they are isolated actually i thought the flipside i thought so many older adults lived in nursing homes and i didn't want to work in a nursing home and so when i realized that ninety five percent of older adults living community is not in nursing or not in the confines of a nursing home i said oh i could work with ninety five percent of older americans so that was exciting to me because i always loved spending time with older adults so i started pursuing this i was studying sociology but i was in a gerontology certification program which ended up being the equivalent of a double major and i did an internship from an auburn hospital looking at programs for older adults from the federal level down to twenty one communities in this metro west area and i learned about intergenerational programs and i that's what i love you know that's what i love i've always loved children i was a certified babysitter i earned money running children's birthday parties and so i just combine my two loves and i was actually going to my senior year of college i had to write a grant proposal and a written project to go with it and i did the outline for a intergenerational program that's now called bridges and i was dating my husband at the time and he said why don't you see if the scene you're playing for the grant and i did and they were and we actually expanded the grant and so for two years i was at this very senior center in my hometown and we moved from watertown to said barry so is there for two years developing all different types of intergenerational pretty bridges program really and i once i graduated i went to holy cross once i when you're talking about the five percent who are in the nursing homes that you're not inferring that out of the ninety five percent are living with their families you just mean they're living independent of nurs nursing facilities then rare is the gap that needs to be filled is there well they're not necessarily involved or active with their own families actually i think that nursing homes have wonderful intergenerational programs to go it was just my own personal preference i didn't want to work in a nursing home personally and so it was like i had all these opportunities it was like a playground for me professionally so what's overages do so if i may step work in small groups usually two older adults over the age of fifty five or sixty or sixty five depending on a community with a group of about five students and there are three or four sick roups happening it is currently under the guidance of a teacher or community staff person and the leader or the teacher or the staff person each time that those groups gather there's a specific thing and the teachers do an introduction to and then the children in preparation have to interview their grandparents are another elder in their circle of love and so they share what they learn in their interviews and the seniors at the table share what they learn what their life experience was and then they do a group project together about whatever the  and so this is a learning this is in a learning environment yes usually it is learning based and we expect that everybody will learn including the seniors and the teacher which is really nice and i hear senior say that all the time you learn so which is really neat and i always learn when i lead it so it is it's about mutual learning and cooperation and the concept that we all have something to learn and we all have something or those of our age and that's inherent in our program so it is this more of an intellectual pursuit or is this really more of a let's for lack of a better word spiritual approach to building a sense of community and teaching the connection of the human experience and that you asked me that because i do believe that there's a spiritual component that we realize that we are connected in that there is a power beyond all of us and people will say about that that's what they experience in the it's so don't be afraid to say that i did well you know do and we try to really teach actually one of the lessons talks about how each of us is a gift to this world and how you want to lasso it is a beautiful us and another one is about how we smart and the fact that communities as far away as belmont yeah you know wanted to participate and so they started asking me to spread the program and the women started coming forward saying i'll help you spread the program tell me what to do and so i decided to harness that energy and realize that there was a god telling giving me a message and so i investigated options and decided to found this nonprofit organization in order to be a nonprofit you have to have a board so i put together a professional board not a fan and we were up and running so that and so they're pro what is evolved over time as our original program was for active older adults in grades but we've now have two other curricula one for middle schoolers and one for early readers and so stacey has been offering on and then it has an art project to go with it as well as the discussion question so we pick out a theme from that book ever well if this is ongoing and i'm guessing that there is a need for some more volunteer it's actually a short term commitment so when they run it stacey and her team will decide we're going to run it for four weeks or six weeks and it's usually an hour a week for those four weeks so it's really a minimal commitment and people just have so much fun and what we find is a lot of the volunteers return year after year after year well because you're building a commitment and a sense of community exactly and it's all fine and well it's hard for older adults have time with kids yeah and to be able to show up and enjoy and not have to think about it and  they all think it's been done you just get to share and enjoy it so fun well i think there must be a certain amount of comfort in the structure being there some but anybody has knows what their spot in their places and then they can just put themselves into out the rest of this season i think this piece is looking for four more volunteer hours for one hour a week for four weeks coming up in may and june well i hope you hear that out there we need for more volunteers there's room for you and you should actually contact you contact our office but you can also contact the belmont senior center and janet to sign up for those excellent excellent it's very and i actually was asked to give  talk at a church recently for a senior luncheon and a man came up and he said i want to present you and i said ok and so he did the introduction he said one of my friends kept telling me to do bridges and she said she was not going to stop telling me to do bridges until i said yes and she was confident that i would thank her for the rest of my life and he said she had asked me about nine times and i've been doing it ever since so and we hear that  well i think it's a it's a very worthy and a prize i think you do yourself a service to get involved and it's something that's always been near and dear to my heart i went to so we didn't know that about each other before we got here today so i want to thank you and that's what's going on