"Intergen" - a Charity bringing older and younger people together in secondary and primary schools....

To set up a YouTube channel for the Intergen programme, Liveryman Brian Ing needs 100 Subscribers!  Calling on WCoMC members to subscribe - even if only in the short term....

Charity Purpose

Intergen:  Providing local help for key parts of the local community

Two sections of our local communities are being increasingly challenged:

• Schools are expected to continuously improve the education experience, and achieve better numeracy and literacy results, despite increasing class sizes and constrained budgets.
• Senior citizens are living longer, often without close family nearby, and the social care budget is proving increasingly inadequate.

These two groups are often competing for scarcer resources in order to meet these challenges. 

Intergen provides a local approach for these two groups to work together. It successfully contributes to providing solutions to reduce the stress on resources and enhance the lives of the teaching staff, pupils and the elderly.

Everybody involved with these local initiatives report enthusiastically on the contributions made.

Intergen reduces costs & improves outcomes & well-being for pupils & older people in a local approach to bring these two groups together

Charity mechanism

Intergen is the flagship programme of From Generation 2 Generation, a registered charity building bridges between older and younger people, by bringing them together in secondary and primary schools. Older people act as volunteers in schools, providing both classroom support to teachers and support staff in school.

A partnership is set up with three local schools, a secondary and two primary schools. In each partnership a retired person living within 2 miles of them is appointed to become the partnership coordinator.

The schools are in the driving seat. At a regular, once-a-term business meeting for the partnership, they discuss with the partnership coordinator what they want the older volunteers to provide in terms of skills and knowledge so they can inspire and support the pupils. The coordinator then recruits local older people to act as volunteers.

Older people share their time, skills, knowledge and life experience supporting teachers and pupils;  for example helping them with reading, numeracy, history, sewing, writing and music.

In return, the older people feel valued and wanted. Both pupils and the volunteers have fun and learn from each other in the school community they share.

Impacts

Impact 1:  Improved quality of life and wellbeing for older people: The Intergen programme offers older people the opportunity to have regular activity outside the home and to engage with schoolchildren in a stimulating and fun environment. The Intergen programme reduces the sense of isolation for older people and allows them to make a meaningful contribution to their local community. Volunteers talk about how the work gives them a sense of purpose and makes them more confident around young people.

Impact 2: Increased children’s performance and life experience, a more rounded education: Pupils and teachers regularly comment on the positive influence that Intergen volunteers have on the children that they work with, both individually and as a wider group. We are working with head teachers to provide data on the impact of the programme on the provision of an inspiring, well rounded, broad and balanced curriculum. We are also measuring the impact of the volunteers input on the pupils’ performance in primary school in reading, writing and mathematics.

Impact 3: Cost savings: The Intergen programme provides significant savings to both schools and local authority adult social care services.

What we as WCoMC can do to help...

Intergen has been going for over five years and has been operationally successful with some impressive references from recipients of their support.  However, to continue (and expand beyond one London and one Manchester Borough) they are in need of continuing funding and are turning to modern social media approaches to support their more direct fund raising efforts.  They have some impressive interviews with teachers and volunteers in short videos and they wish to present all of these in a YouTube channel!

To have a Youtube channel named after the organisation requires the initial channel to be subscribed to by a 100 people.  WCOMC members are asked to go to www.IntergenUK ....  and "Subscribe".  In the fullness of time as Intergen builds its profile and many more subscribers are attracted, those not wishing to continue to subscribe can "unsubscribe" if they so wish.  The request for support is thus a short term request to help them achieve the initial step.   

Thank you !

Liveryman Brian Ing