Older adults are at risk for mental health concerns, such as social isolation and suicide. Risk factors to suicide among older adults, such as loneliness and social isolation, may be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gatekeepers in the community are a significant source of identification and referral of older adults at risk of mental and physical…

"Dementia's Journey" explores the year-long process of a playwright working with a charity and its partners in writing a play focussing on experiences of dementia in a South Asian community, and how the need to tell an emotionally engaging and resonant story is balanced with the requirement to raise awareness of the issues involved. It…

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency and the nation's largest grantmaker in support of service and volunteering, manages AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Volunteer Generation Fund. This brief report provides an overview of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).

This paper explores some important aspects of the generation of practical knowledge through later life. It is about the relationship between knowledge generation, agency and capability, developed informally through the life experiences in and through the Company of Others. It emphasises how the everyday processes of socialisation create invaluable…

Extension programming often strives to achieve maximum impact on a minimum budget, but when it comes to sourcing local produce, asking farmers to donate sellable commodity can result in a dip into their profits. By connecting community partners, Extension can facilitate collaborations that work in the favor of all participating parties and…

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is a federal agency that annually engages millions of Americans in service and volunteering at more than 50,000 sites across the country. Senior Corps and AmeriCorps members play a vital role in helping communities design and implement locally determined, results-driven, cost-effective…

Background: Limited access to fitness programs for rural older adults make lay or volunteer delivery approaches potentially desirable to extend reach. However, factors affecting adoption of such approaches are not well explored. Purpose: This study sought to identify barriers and facilitators affecting adoption of a volunteer lay delivery approach…

The informal learning that older (age 50+) men experience in Australia has been the subject of a suite of recent, intensive, mixed methods research projects in community-based voluntary organizations. The purpose of the research was to examine where men are learning in these contexts beyond work and formal education rather than to assume and…

The Experience Corps[R], a community-based intergenerational program, was developed to promote the health of older adults while simultaneously addressing unmet social and academic needs in public elementary schools. The model was designed to draw on, and potentially activate, the wisdom of older adults. This paper explores the nature of…

Ideas for orienting and training elderly adults to work as volunteers with children in school and nonschool settings are given in this manual. In addition, ideas for planning the goals of an intergenerational program, recruiting volunteers, and preparing children, teachers, and child care staff for interaction with volunteers are provided.…

The role of voluntary workers in the social services is the focus of this book. Following the introduction (Chapter 1), the remaining nine chapters discuss the following topics: The Background to Voluntary Work Today; The Volunteer; Volunteers as Others See Them; What Voluntary Workers Do; Organization of the Work of Volunteers; Recruitment and…

The training and use of volunteers is described in a comparison of two community integration projects for the developmentally disabled, one aimed at mainstreaming preschoolers, the other at increasing community integration of elderly persons. Changes in attitudes and knowledge by nondisabled volunteers and measured outcomes for clients are also…

The RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) in E. St. Louis is described. How the program got started, guidelines, funding information, and testimony from the volunteers themselves are included. (CT)

Older volunteers are helping urban students in developing the confidence and skills to succeed. Older adults, with their life experience and strong commitment to social service, can make a special contribution in underfunded and understaffed urban schools.

Volunteers and other community-based assistants can relieve some of the financial burden brought on by school-budget cutbacks. This publication describes how enlisting the help of senior volunteers and workers benefits both children and seniors, and it presents some guidelines for implementation of intergeneration programs. The programs provide…