M CENTER OF EXCELLENCE

Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging's The Future of Retirement Project - Project Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated interest in the health, wealth, work, and social engagement of older adults. Goals have been reexamined and challenges and inequities highlighted. With a rapidly aging population, work to improve the retirement years of older Americans is more crucial than ever. Our objective is to identify gaps and opportunities for action and to help individuals and institutions realize the upsides and mitigate the risks of longer lives. While the financial services industry, the healthcare sector, and policymakers have focused significant efforts on preparation for the retirement years, they have largely worked within their own silos. The Project will provide a forum and platform for cross-sector collaboration among these and other stakeholders in developing tools, programs, recommendations, and innovative solutions to maximize the possibilities and potential of 21st Century retirement.

Encore's Co-generational Service Project - The focus: Co-generational service bringing the distinctive and complementary talents of older and younger people together in ways that help solve important social problems, forge meaningful intergenerational bonds, bridge differences and enhance understanding between the generations. The problem: The time for this work is upon us. We are becoming a much more multigenerational society, but due to widespread age segregation and other barriers, are ill-prepared for both making the most of longer lives and the prospect of five generations living and working together. Ageism is widespread. There is talk of generational conflict, with older people and younger ones too often locked in a zero-sum struggle. And loneliness is widely seen as one of the most significant public health issues facing the nation, with older and younger people the two most socially isolated groups in America today. A proposed solution: Service programs are one way to address this problem. Some organizations are already mobilizing younger people to serve older ones, while others are mobilizing older individuals to serve young ones. We want to bring older and younger people together to serve jointly, side by side, helping others while strengthening the communities where they serve and the nation as a whole. This new initiative will help catalyze, elevate, and expand these joint, co-generational, service opportunities. Over time, we believe this model can help produce an overall norm shift in society from one that rejects the contributions of elders and cuts generations off from each other, to one built around the prospect of generational connection and collaboration. Encore's new initiative to catalyze co-generational service builds on our long history in advancing service and volunteering by older people, starting with the creation of Experience Corps two decades ago. Although Experience Corps was designed to recruit and place older people to help children and youth, in some cities young adults in programs like VISTA and AmeriCorps were engaged alongside the older Experience Corps members. There was magic in these connections, sparking the idea of co-generational service that underpins this new initiative. We are now poised to advance this approach in more expansive and systematic fashion.