UMaine program that connects students with older adults featured in BDN
The Bangor Daily News published a feature article on Project Generations, a new program at the University of Maine that connects college students with older residents in Greater Bangor for their mutual benefit. The program is informally modeled after a program that was founded at Ithaca College and now has a chapter at Cornell University in New York. UMaine social work student Chloe Gray of Gorham volunteered with the program when she spent her freshman year at Ithaca, according to the article. “After I transferred to UMaine, I was looking for a way for students to reach out to the larger community and meet other people — especially people who might need us,” Gray said. With support from the Maine Center on Aging at UMaine and Eastern Area Agency on Aging, she decided to start a group on the Orono campus, with guidance from but no official connection to the program at Ithaca, the article states. College students don’t have much opportunity to interact with older adults on a casual, personal level, Gray said. “I would love to see this get really huge,” she said of the program that currently has 14 student volunteers who are paired with elders in the community. “I want this to help break down the disconnect between my generation and older adults.”