As Lorraine George sat in the classroom she witnessed the amazing interaction between the elderly residents of Windsor Place and preschoolers. She hopes to bring this concept back to the United Kingdom.
“There’s so much in it for the children and the residents,” George said. “You only have to see it, to see how magical it is.”
George is from the county of Devon, England, and for the last four weeks has been traveling the United States to observe such intergenerational learning programs.
Her trip is funded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, a program that sponsors recipients to go anywhere in the world to pursue their passions and come back to make a difference. George said English children don’t have a lot of interaction with their elders.
“There’s so many children in the U.K. without extended family or who don’t have a lot of grandmas or grandpas,” George said. “To have that opportunity to build relationships with people they won’t see a lot of, it’s really special. The grandpas and grandmas build an awful lot.”
After hundreds of hours researching stateside locations, George said Oklahoma and Kansas have the most centers that merge children and assisted living residents.
George remarked on how comfortable the preschoolers were in both the classroom and when meeting other adults, saying she wants this concept to take shape back in her home country as a whole. George said she has the right connections to help build up a new program.
“I need to go back and talk to the right people and hope it doesn’t just happen where I live, but it happens in the entire U.K.,” George said.
George will pass on what she has learned to an organization called United for All Ages, which is similar to a U.S. program called Generations United.
George visited facilities in Seattle, Oklahoma City, Enid and Tulsa. Her last stop was in Coffeyville.
Singing Age to Age’s praises
