Involvement in community service can benefit middle-school students by helping them feel valued, teaching responsibility, and improving teacher-student relations. A rural Pennsylvania middle school evaluated community-service opportunities and then employed StarServe, a resource kit encouraging students to develop their own service projects.…

Describes a "grandparent" program of senior citizen volunteers (N=15) designed to provide elementary school children (N=140) access to caring, supportive senior citizens and to provide opportunities for older adults to engage in meaningful activities in school setting. Results of a program evaluation support the value of the volunteer program for…

Both senior volunteers and learning disabled preschool children benefitted from the Grandparents Read to Me Project in Lakewood, Ohio. Seniors rarely missed a session and the children began to select books over toys during free time and ask their parents to buy books and read to them at home. (CB)

This document contains 19 papers on volunteerism presented at a conference on aging. The papers, grouped into themes of trends and implications, resourceful roles, resources, and an agenda for the future, include the following: "Demographic Potential and the Quiet Revolution" (Opening Remarks by Robert A. Harootyan); "Volunteers in the 1990s"…

The manual is designed to help special education administrators, teachers, and other interested people to develop an intergenerational school volunteer program. Background information on the program serving Alleghany County (Pennsylvania) is provided along with a review of benefits for students, teachers, volunteers, and the schools. Concerns of…

Describes a 9-month intergenerational program designed to establish a more intimate involvement between a group of 25 fourth graders and 25 elderly volunteers from Senior Neighbors, a multipurpose senior citizens center. Presents the format used to organize the project and identifies ongoing activities and program benefits. (Author/PVV)

Describes an Adopt-a-Grandparent program involving seventh-grade students and area senior citizens. Describes aspects of program implementation and organization, including advance preparation, contacting and meeting grandparents, funding, and visits. Discusses program outcomes, including behavioral observations, studies related to…

A senate hearing on the role of older volunteers in the schools was held at the Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Florida. At the time of the hearing, Florida was the only state in the United States with a school volunteer program supported by legislation, appropriation, and a state program coordinating office. Students, volunteer program…

Because no program existed in the Pottstown, Pennsylvania area which allowed children and senior citizens to interact in mutually beneficial ways, a practicum was designed to implement an intergenerational program in an elementary school attended by 540 students in grades K through 5. The intervention consisted of monthly meetings with volunteers,…

Demonstrates the benefits of intergenerational reading to children, seniors, parents, and libraries, and surveys library programs in Arizona, California, and New Mexico that mix generations with books and reading. The programs described vary from scheduled to spontaneous. (EAM)

Describes the explosion in intergenerational programs linking school children and seniors in Ontario and in other Canadian provinces. Discusses program benefits, form and content of programs, service-reciprocity programs, age segregation in today's society, and social context for the increase in programs. United Generations Ontario is dedicated to…

In our rapidly aging society, the support of older adults is critical for public education. Older taxpayers are not as racially diverse as the school children affected by their votes. Although a few districts have recognized senior citizens as rich, untapped resources and implemented systematic intergenerational programs, most efforts are…

What happens when you combine senior citizens, pre-service art teachers, and elementary students? Cross-generational connections based on sharing memories, ideas, skills, laughter, tears, and creativity. The authors describe the cross-generational book exchange project. This project was initiated when a group of Central Michigan University (CMU)…

Howe-To Industries is an intergenerational entrepreneurship project at the John de la Howe School, a state-supported institution for at-risk youth in rural McCormick County, South Carolina. Expansion of this type of program into public schools could engage the community and school system in a mutually beneficial relationship. John de la Howe…

This document reports on the effects of an integenerational program which was conducted to involve senior citizen volunteers with preschool children in a university day care setting. The primary emphases of the project were to enhance the children's reading readiness and foster a mutually beneficial relationship between seniors and children.…