What We Learned: Co-Generational Innovators Are Building Bridges Across Age, 09.29.26 Transformation Tuesday

What happens when we stop treating generations as separate groups and start creating opportunities for them to learn, create, collaborate, and lead together?

That was the question at the heart of Gray Panthers NYC’s September Transformation Tuesday, “Co-Generational Innovators: A Showcase of Voices Building Bridges.” Facilitated by Gray Panthers NYC board member and CoGenerate Voices Fellow Meg LaPorte, the conversation brought together a remarkable group of innovators working across housing, storytelling, the arts, education, media, and community building.

The common thread was clear: intergenerational connection is not simply something nice to have. It is a powerful way to challenge ageism, reduce isolation, strengthen communities, and create something better together.

From generations in conflict to generations in collaboration

The conversation began with Marci Alboher and Nandita Raghuram, conveners and facilitators of the inaugural CoGenerate Voices Fellowship, which brought together 21 civic leaders ranging in age from 15 to 81.

Over four months, fellows developed their public voices, practiced sharing platforms and stories across generations, explored collaboration, and learned how to amplify their ideas. But perhaps most importantly, they learned from one another.

The fellowship's larger goal is ambitious: to move society from a story of “generations in conflict” to “generations in collaboration.”

Nandita also offered an important caution. Even people deeply committed to intergenerational work can carry ageist assumptions. Age gaps may not always matter in a collaboration, but ageism and power dynamics still need to be recognized, examined, and addressed when they surface.

That self-awareness may be one of the most important lessons of all: we cannot dismantle ageism without looking honestly at the assumptions we may carry ourselves.

Independence doesn't mean doing everything alone

For Allison Donnelly, founder of JoeyCo, the answer to isolation can sometimes be found in an unexpected place: the spare bedroom.

JoeyCo connects older adults with extra rooms to university students looking for affordable housing and flexible work. The arrangement offers practical benefits to both generations, but Allison emphasized that the real value is often found in the relationships that develop.

She described matches where students and older adults share meals, discuss politics, exchange perspectives, and have deeply personal conversations about life and illness. The model challenges the idea that independence means living without connection.

We can be independent while still being deeply interdependent.

Storytelling can bridge generations

Adele Ryono, a high school senior and founder of Regenerations, started her organization after losing her grandmother, who had helped raise her.

Adele was left with a feeling many of us know: there were questions she wished she had asked and stories she wished she had heard.

Regenerations helps young people have meaningful conversations with older adults in their lives. Students learn to ask thoughtful questions, listen empathetically, record conversations, and then co-write essays capturing the perspectives of both generations.

The important word is both.

The goal isn't for young people simply to learn from older people. Both participants share stories, knowledge, and worldviews.

Adele later described research she conducted through focus groups showing that sharing personal narratives can deepen historical, social, and emotional understanding. Structured conversations can help people move beyond the surface-level interactions we often have with people of other generations and create space for more difficult, meaningful questions.

The arts can create a common language

Filmmaker, educator, and social entrepreneur Jameson Yingling shared the Rock of Ages Project, which pairs university students with older adults in Southwest Florida for regular in-person gatherings centered on oral storytelling.

The project focuses on stories of compassion, kindness, and empathy while creating intentional opportunities to reduce loneliness and social isolation.

For Jameson, the fellowship reinforced something he was already discovering through his work: even when communities face enormous problems of division and disconnection, there are people creating opportunities to restore relationships that have been lost or weakened.

Jordan Evans, co-founder of Art Against Ageism, takes a similarly creative approach.

Through murals, installations, and participatory art, Art Against Ageism brings community members together to make ageism visible and promote more positive beliefs about aging.

Jordan emphasized that awareness itself is powerful. Once we recognize ageism around us, we are better equipped to challenge it rather than unconsciously internalizing it.

Music can make collaboration impossible to ignore

Rene Cruz, manager of the Eisner Intergenerational Music Program in Los Angeles, shared another compelling example.

The program brings musicians ranging in age from 14 to 84 together to rehearse and perform. What began as one ensemble has grown into four, culminating in free community concerts.

Music provides an immediate shared purpose. But the program also uses dialogue workshops to help participants confront preconceived ideas about one another and have conversations about age, identity, and assumptions.

The result is more than an orchestra. It is a community learning how to listen.

As one participant put it, musicians don't have to be the same age or even speak the same language. They simply have to come together, share their gifts, listen to one another, and create something better as a group than they could individually.

Representation matters, too

Ruby Jones, president and CEO of Empower Media Exchange, brought the conversation into the world of journalism and community information.

Her work grew from an early experience bringing elementary school students into assisted living communities and later from her realization that mainstream and local media often leave both young people's voices and older adults' voices out of the conversation.

Her organization works to make community information more trustworthy, accessible, and representative.

That means more than publishing stories about communities. It means creating opportunities for people within those communities to tell their own stories.

Ruby also connected this work to technology. Her grandmother's increasing difficulty navigating technology left her struggling to participate in conversations about her own community. Accessibility, media literacy, and representation therefore become part of the same larger question: Who gets to have a voice?

The most powerful antidote to ageism may be knowing one another

Leena Albin Ali, founder of Golden Connections, began her work in ninth grade after recognizing how meaningful her own relationship with her grandmother was.

Her organization creates opportunities for teens and older adults to form genuine relationships. And her experience with CoGenerate changed how she thought about those interactions.

Intergenerational programs should not be designed simply around young people helping older people.

Both generations should contribute. Both should gain.

That distinction matters.

When young and older people actually get to know one another, Leena explained, assumptions begin to break down. An older person stops being “an older person” and becomes someone you know, laugh with, learn from, and talk to about things that matter.

The same transformation happens in reverse.

That may be one of the simplest and most powerful ways to challenge ageism: create more opportunities for people of different ages to actually know one another.

Connection requires more than putting people in the same room

One of the most important points to emerge from the panel was that simply bringing generations together isn't enough.

Rene described using music as a way to break the ice, followed by structured dialogue workshops that allow participants to address difficult assumptions.

Adele described structured storytelling as a way to move conversations beyond the everyday.

Ruby emphasized community listening as a critical part of rebuilding trust.

Across all three examples, the message was remarkably consistent:

Connection deepens when we create intentional space for people to listen, share, question, and understand one another.

Ageism is global. So is the opportunity to challenge it.

During the audience discussion, a question arose about whether ageism is primarily an American phenomenon or whether it exists around the world.

The answer from the panel was clear: ageism is a global issue, although its expression varies across cultures.

The discussion also raised an important counterpoint. While older people are often portrayed as dependent or as recipients of services, that framing ignores the enormous contributions older adults continue to make to families, communities, economies, civic life, and social movements.

As one audience member emphasized, older adults in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s continue to contribute in countless ways. Another participant connected the conversation to international efforts around the rights of older persons and noted that ageism continues to surface in discussions across regions of the world.The challenge is not simply to recognize those contributions.

It is to make them visible.

What can we do differently?

The projects featured in this Transformation Tuesday are wildly different: shared housing, oral history, filmmaking, murals, journalism, orchestras, youth programs.

But they share a philosophy.

They don't ask, How can one generation help another?

They ask, What can we create together?

That shift from service to partnership, from separation to connection, and from assumptions to relationships is at the heart of co-generational innovation.

And it is deeply aligned with the vision of Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn, who believed older people should be a force for social change and that generations should come together rather than remain in separate silos.

As Michelle Arnot reminded us at the close of the program, the conversation was a powerful reminder of what Gray Panthers stands for: speaking up, taking our place, and making our voices heard.

Because when we create spaces where generations can listen, learn, create, and lead together, we don't just build bridges between age groups.

We build stronger communities for everyone.