A little over a decade ago, Ruth Wooden was searching for her next adventure. She had already spent 40+ years working in communications and nonprofit management and wanted to apply her skills in a new and meaningful way.
But she was met with an enormous challenge: Our society doesn’t offer many new learning and career opportunities for people who are later in life. By and large, there’s an expectation that these individuals will retire and live out the rest of their lives in siloed communities.
For Wooden, that didn’t sit right. She decided to attend Union Theological Seminary to figure out her next path. She ended up starting Union’s Encore Transition Program, a transformative journey designed specifically for adults aged 55 and over.
Throughout the program, participants engage with readings and exercises that are designed to help them reflect, discover new passions and skills, and chart out their next steps. The fully online program, which is now in its eighth year, attracts a diverse cohort of participants and offers significant financial support to ensure people from all income levels can attend. The graduates have gone on to do profound social justice work.
This program is in lock-step with Union’s core mission to pursue peace and justice. To create a truly just society, people from all walks of life – and all generations – must have a voice. We recently hosted an event, “Social Justice Needs Every Generation’s Voice: Union At A Crossroads” to explore how we can create a society that embraces age diversity and integrates the perspectives of different generations.
Marc Freedman – founder of Encore.org and CoGenerate – delivered the keynote, while Wooden led a panel discussion on the topic. The panel included a woman in her 60s who is enrolled in Union’s Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ) program, a woman in her 70s who is a full-time MDiv student, and two men in their thirties – a Union alum and a current student. Both of the women were alums of the Encore program.
After the discussion, we sat down with Freedman and Wooden to learn more.
Freedman offered insight into how our society came to stratify people by age. “Until the 1920s or 30s, people were oblivious to age in many ways. But in the 20th century – often for the most uplifting, progressive reasons – we started separating people” through ideas like child labor laws, universal schooling, social security, nursing homes, and senior centers. He furthered, “We really were trying to provide a sense of community for older adults and trying to more efficiently meet their needs and the needs of other populations.”
As a result, there are now relatively few chances for people to connect with folks of different ages in day-to-day life. For Freedman, that’s a major missed opportunity. Older people hold unparalleled experience and guidance that can help younger people. And interactions with younger people can help older people keep mentally and physically sharp.
To build a truly multigenerational society, we need three things. First, imagination. According to Freedman, “We’ve been separated for so long by age that we don’t have a vision for what is possible when people are together.” We need to create that vision.
Next, we need innovation. Freedman explained, “We’ve been brilliant over the past century in coming up with new social institutions to separate people by age. We need to be equally inspired to come up with a new generation of settings which bring people together in the course of daily life.”
And finally, we need investment in these ideas. For Freedman, higher education institutions can be particularly impactful. For him, “There’s enormous promise in higher education becoming a training ground for the multi-generational society – teaching older and younger people how to thrive in this new world of age.”
As a result, programs like Encore fill a crucial void. Freedman elaborated, “They’re an answer to the need for further opportunities to learn and prepare for this new chapter in life that’s taking shape between the middle years and anything resembling old age… We need an education for that stage of life.”
Crucially, we must ensure that these programs are widely accessible. Encore is special in that respect. All classes are virtual, so people from all over the country can take part. And with extensive financial support, the program is accessible to people of different means.
Wooden summarized the program well: “This is the class I wish I could have taken.” Looking ahead, she is considering even more programs to help older people uncover their next journey.