For years, Vicki Bright wished her youngest daughter had a grandparent living nearby.
An intergenerational volunteering program has made her wish come true.
“I just felt like she was the kind of kid who needed a grandparent,” Bright said of her 13-year-old, Georgia Culhane-Bright. Her daughter was “craving” attention from someone other than her parents. Vicki Bright’s mother died long before Bright had kids; Georgia’s paternal grandparents are also deceased. Bright’s father — Georgia’s only grandparent — lives in Australia.
Bright has two adult children from her first marriage who have involved grandparents. It was entirely different when she had a child with her second husband, Bright says. In 2013, when Georgia was little, Bright and Georgia’s father moved to Australia. They returned to Vancouver in 2019, and Bright noticed how isolated they were.
“I realized that we were just kind of one of those families that was a bit isolated in terms of connection, including an intergenerational connection,” she said.
But since last fall, her daughter has regularly spent time with a senior in Vancouver, Karen Cooke. Usually Georgia and Karen get together twice a month. The two have visited the aquarium and museums, seen a pantomime and worked on crafts at Cooke’s house.
They connected through Volunteer Grandparents. The Burnaby, B.C.-based charity encourages intergenerational volunteering relationships between children and seniors. The charity’s longest running program is the Family Match Program where an adult, 50 or older, is paired with a family, where the children, usually between three and 14 years old, do not have access to a grandparent.
Bright contacted Volunteer Grandparents shortly after the family returned to Vancouver, but the pandemic stalled the process. Then, Bright and Georgia’s father separated during the pandemic.
The match with Cooke was “divine timing,” said Bright. “I feel like the universe was shining down on us.”
Veronica Grossi, program manager of Volunteer Grandparents, often hears from enthusiastic participants. Families and seniors commit to a one-year match. “But if it is a good match, they will last indefinitely,” she said.
Grossi, who has been with the organization 19 years, says she receives photos of seniors at the weddings of the children they met during the program. She has heard stories of families visiting their volunteer grandparents in long-term care facilities years after the match was made.
Currently, there are 20 senior volunteers in the program who have either been placed with a family or are waiting for one, says Grossi. She tries to match participants based on shared interests and values. Before the pandemic, there were more families waiting for matches than senior volunteers, she says. Now, the opposite is true: more seniors are waiting for matches.
Enhanced life
Often, parents do not have as much time to spend with their children as they would like, Grossi said. Many seniors are lonely, and may want to spend time with children. Most of the volunteers in the program are single women, she says.
Intergenerational relationships “are so important,” said Grossi. “It seems like youth are more and more segregated” from seniors, she said. But seniors have so much to teach young people — and youth can teach seniors too, especially about technology, she says.
Research has found that relationships between generations boost seniors’ health, primarily by reducing loneliness — which is often identified as a significant health concern, for seniors and the young. But Canada does not have a co-ordinated approach to encouraging intergenerational volunteering.
The House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities is studying how the federal government can promote intergenerational volunteering between youth and seniors. A report is expected before Parliament breaks for the summer.
“We need more funding,” says Grossi. She works part-time only and co-ordinates all Volunteer Grandparents’ programs. Volunteer Grandparents runs three programs: the family match program; a school seniors program where adults volunteer in Metro Vancouver area elementary schools; and a pen pal program linking children with seniors in long-term care.
Volunteers go through an extensive screening process, said Grossi. Besides police record checks, they have two lengthy interviews and provide several references.
More programs are needed that connect seniors and youth, says Sharon MacKenzie, the founder of i2i Intergenerational Society of Canada. MacKenzie, a retired teacher, has spent 17 years advocating for the federal government to fund organizations that support intergenerational relationships.
“Isolation comes in all sorts of ways,” said MacKenzie, and seniors, children and youth experience it. But both groups — young and old — can have negative attitudes and fears about the other. Building relationships across generations can help break down those attitudes, she says.
“When you bring those two groups together, what happens out of that is an incredible respect for helping others,” she said. It can be easy for people to divide based on income or gender or religion, she says. “This is something that links all of us: everybody ages,” she said.
In Vancouver, Bright raves about Cooke. “I could just tell instantly that she has only enhanced Georgia’s life,” she said. Cooke is doing exactly what she thinks a grandmother would do with Georgia, she says.
The feeling is mutual. “I enjoy it a lot,” says Cooke, 73, an active volunteer whose grandchildren live in Switzerland. “I was looking for something that had to do with children.”
She and Georgia have bonded over their love of music and crafts. Most recently, they sewed a bag together. Cooke says she wondered at first if they would be able to connect since the world is so different from her youth. “We have not run out of things to talk about,” she said.
Cooke says she hopes the relationship continues longer than the year she has agreed to volunteer.
“I’d like to be in her life,” she said. “And hopefully, I still will be. I don’t see myself withdrawing in the short term or doing something else. It’s fun to have a young person who likes to do what you like to do.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified “Vicki Bright” as “Veronica Bright.” We regret the error.
A previous version of this story identified Veronica Grossi as Volunteer Grandparents’ executive director. She is, in fact, the program manager of Volunteer Grandparents.
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