Community Possibilities

Everyone's Story Deserves to Be Heard: Meet Arielle Galinsky of the Legacy Project

• Ann Price

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What if we could bridge the generational divide while preserving the rich stories of our elders? This question drives Ariel Galinsky, founder of The Legacy Project, a nonprofit that pairs college students with older adults.

Ariel's journey began with personal loss - her grandfather's passing when she was just ten, leaving stories uncaptured. While working in a senior community where her grandmother lived, she recognized a universal gap in intergenerational connection. This sparked what would become her life's mission: creating structured opportunities for meaningful conversations across age divides.

The Legacy Project operates through campus chapters where students interview older adults throughout an academic year, ultimately publishing their collected stories. For many participants, this represents their first significant engagement with elders outside their families. The impact runs deeper than companionship - actively combating social isolation affecting both age groups while challenging pervasive ageist stereotypes that limit both generations.

The Legacy Project demonstrates the power of intergenerational collaboration as a mechanism for broader social change. By valuing elders' stories and fostering meaningful relationships, we create pathways toward more compassionate approaches to aging while enriching both generations in the process. Ready to make your community more intergenerational? Visit LegacyProjectInc.org to learn how you can get involved or start a chapter in your area.

Guest Bio

Arielle Galinsky is the Co-Founder of The Legacy Project, a national nonprofit that connects college students and older adults in their communities for mutual storytelling, uplifting, and documenting life stories. Arielle is passionate about bridging generations and serves as a CoGen Impact Fellow with CoGenerate, where she leads efforts to expand the reach of the ‘Let’s Make Next Gen CoGen’ pledge—amplifying awareness of intergenerational engagement among young adults. Arielle, an MPP/JD candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and Yale Law School, is committed to advancing aging policy reform at both the state and national levels—rooted in her belief that intergenerational advocacy is the key to moving the needle.

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Ann Price:

Hi everybody, welcome to Community Possibilities. You know, my husband's grandmother her name was Martha May was probably one of the kindest people that I have ever met, met. You could never go into Granny's house without her welcoming you with whatever food she had, and if she knew that you had a favorite, she was going to make it for you. And so Granny would make her famous beans, her red beans, cornbread, either with or without sody, oh my gosh. And her goulash made with hamburger and Campbell's tomato soup and some corn and some potatoes Just yummy country food that she made with heart. And, oh my gosh, her biscuits, y'all Her biscuits. And she taught my husband how to make them. He's kind of lost touch because it was by touch. She made them by touch. She had this big bowl full of flour and she would scoop out the middle and that's where she put her milk and her Crisco. You know, back in the day we used hard Crisco, not the liquid right, and she did it all by hand and they were delicious, of course they were. So she's not with us anymore. She died at 90. And the family tried their best to keep her at home with them as long as they could, until they just couldn't take care of her anymore and they put her in a nursing home that was very close to their house where she knew all of the people that worked there. And for a nursing home it was a nice facility and anytime we were in town we always made sure we went to see her and we took our kids because we wanted them to have that experience. We wanted her to know that she was loved and not forgotten. So I wanted to share that story with you today because I think a lot about social connection and who we talk to and who we don't, who we live near and who we don't live near, and why that is. And many of our older neighbors maybe we don't live near. They often reside in nursing homes, at least in the US. They might be in assisted living centers or in communities that are far apart from many of us. And, as we said on the show before, systems work as they are designed to Well.

Ann Price:

As I was looking at conferences this fall we're entering conference season. I know I have several to go to I was looking for some other situations where I could go and meet some folks and I found the Social Connection Conference, which is being held in my backyard of Atlanta this October and unfortunately, as luck would have it, I can't go because I have another speaking engagement at another conference. But as I was looking at the schedule, I came across Ariel Galinsky. Looking at the schedule, I came across Ariel Galinsky, who is the co-founder and CEO of the Legacy Project, and I was so fascinated by her topic. I started looking into the Legacy Project and Ariel is my guest today. So just so you know, the Legacy Project is a national nonprofit connecting college students with older adults in their communities for mutual storytelling, ensuring that legacies are preserved and celebrated for years to come. And, as their website states, everyone has a story that is worth preserving.

Ann Price:

If you get a chance to attend the Social Connection Conference and I really hope you do I hope you attend Ariel's session. Say hello to me. This young lady is amazing. She's going to tell her story. She just started law school. God bless her. So say hi to Ariel for me if you are at the conference. And if you're unlucky and you don't get to go to that conference this year, I hope you're going to enjoy this session with Ariel. So let's hear from her. I hope you'll DM with me and let me know how this episode inspired you. Maybe tell me a story about a grandmother or grandfather that meant so much to you and just kind of your thoughts on the session today. I hope you enjoy.

Ann Price:

Hi everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. Ariel Galinsky is joining me today. Hi, ariel, hello, it's nice to be here, and I have actually never met. We only met, like on Zoom, like five minutes ago, so hey, so let me tell you how I found you. I was looking at the schedule for the Social Innovation Conference that's going to be here in Atlanta October 28th through the 30th, for those of you who are interested in making social connections, and I saw your name. I saw the Legacy Project. I'm like and I saw your name. I saw the Legacy Project. I'm like, oh, I have to talk to her. Unfortunately, I can't come to the conference because I'm speaking at another conference that overlaps.

Arielle Galinsky:

I'm so disappointed, but that's how I found you, oh, awesome. No, yeah, I actually didn't even know that, so that's lovely. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that conference. The Foundation for Social Connection is. I'm actually a fellow with them this semester and they're a wonderful organization really seeking to build out this platform of research-based social connection and advocacy work throughout the entire country, so I'm very, very much behind the work that they do.

Ann Price:

So I am so curious about your story. We were just chatting about how you were an undergraduate neuroscience major. You just started law school and the Legacy Project, and in my brain I'm trying to tie all of these things together, because I really I say this all the time that we're all called to this work for a reason and our life story leads us to something right. So I know that's true for you too and I'm so excited to hear about your story. So tell us how you came to be who you are.

Arielle Galinsky:

Yeah, I promise it all makes sense, at least in my mind. So I've always been interested in the world of gerontology. That has, throughout my entire life, that kind of has been a perpetuating, you know, theme tying all of my interests together. When I was in high school, I worked in a senior community in my hometown of Canton, Massachusetts, and my grandmother happened to live there at some point during that time period as well, and during that time I got to know a lot of the residents well Through just my daily interaction with them. I was there for almost four years, right, but what I never got to understand was their full life history and, having lost both of my grandfathers at the age of 10 years old, that was something that always stayed with me that I didn't have the foresight at that age or the tools to know how to approach conversations about legacy and life history and learning more about my own grandfathers. And I knew that this wasn't something that I was experiencing in isolation, but that others, both from the older adult perspective and from the younger perspective, weren't really engaging in these types of conversations. And so during this time at the senior community, I started what was known at that time. It was a passion initiative called the Legacy Project, and during that timeframe I interviewed 20 or so of the older adults that lived in that community and had the opportunity just the most wonderful conversations to learn about their life histories through chronological orders. During that time I created a whole set of questions that to this day we still utilize in part to drive some of the interviews that we do, and what the real whole purpose was was to have, at the end, an opportunity for all of the families and all of the old adults and members of the community to join together and listen to these stories. And then COVID happened and obviously a lot of things changed during that timeframe and so I ended up writing a book about all of the stories and that's what kind of created the model of the Legacy Project about all of the stories and that's what kind of created the model of the Legacy Project.

Arielle Galinsky:

Now, that also happened concurrently to the time that my grandmother ended up having lewy body dementia and I saw as her condition worsened and as myself and my family and my grandmother sought to navigate the long-term care system. And in Massachusetts right, which has a fairly strong health system and strong health policies, right, we struggled so much in finding adequate care for my grandmother that was able to continuously meet the evolving needs that she was facing with Lewy body dementia, right, and so we ended up. She ended up cycling through seven different communities during that timeframe and really through that process it just dawned on me that the long-term care system in America is broken, and while we acknowledge that as an issue, there's not a lot of people that are every day dedicated to trying to reform the system. And so my love for intergenerational connections and storytelling, paired with my passion for trying to change the long-term care system, kind of set me on this path of. This is going to be the field that I'm in, and when I went to undergrad, I studied neuroscience because I thought I wanted to do clinical gerontology.

Arielle Galinsky:

I wanted to go to medical school and serve older adult populations. I quickly came to realize or maybe not so quickly, actually, junior year is when I actually made the change realized that that was not really where my heart was at that I'd rather pursue a pathway of policy and law to be able to better shape and serve older adult populations and current generations, as everyone is aging right, so it's not something that I, you know, there's often this framing of them right. So it's not something that I you know, there's often this framing of them right, but it's all of us, we're all aging, and so all of this is to say is now I'm pursuing a pathway, I'm pursuing a master of public policy degree and a law degree so I can focus on my passions of aging policy and elder law and I can pursue this path in the future.

Ann Price:

I love how that all comes. It does come together.

Arielle Galinsky:

Yes.

Ann Price:

Yes, it makes sense. So what is your grandmother's name? Phyllis Phyllis.

Arielle Galinsky:

And is she still with you? No, unfortunately she passed away a few years ago. Sorry.

Ann Price:

I'm sorry. So it sounds like you had a really great connection with your grandmother and, I assume, your grandfathers before you lost them at 10, which warms my heart, because I have four grands now and we're pretty close to them and people keep telling me that, oh, when they get to be teenagers they're not going to want anything to do with you anymore because they don't want anything to do with their parents either. They go off and have a life of their own. So maybe you just gave me a little hope that that's not true. What's your favorite memory about your grandmother?

Arielle Galinsky:

Well, my grandmother was very, and I will also say that my dad's mother, my lovely grandma Loie, is 90, just had her 90th birthday.

Ann Price:

Oh yay.

Arielle Galinsky:

And she consistently inspires me every single day. She still travels the world. Oh, I love it and I wish to be like her, and she's one of my best friends, and I love my grandmother and then Grandma Phyllis. She led her own business and she, up until I remember, even when I was younger in her late 70s, early 80s she was always working. She loved the work that she did.

Arielle Galinsky:

She was a financial planner for families with disabilities and she really had created the business from the ground up, having had no model or blueprint to base off of when she created her business, and that was something that I don't think I really appreciated at the time when I was younger, right, but in hindsight, there's so many parallels to be drawn between my mother and myself and wanting to serve populations that aren't currently recognized by our policy systems and to try to build out organizations or networks of people that really are there to serve those communities, and so that's not necessarily a memory, but it's something that sticks with me from my grandmother and, you know, consistently serves as an inspiration for me in the work that I do.

Ann Price:

I love that story. I love that you learned that from her. And that kind of leads me to my next question. So how did you get from an interest in our older folks' stories like their history, their stories to the Legacy Project as an organization? I mean, I've spent some time on your website. You've got a pretty robust staff there now, so how did that happen?

Arielle Galinsky:

Yeah, so when I went to Tufts my undergrad, it was the fall of 2020. And I had been very fortunate at that time to because I'm always talking about intergenerational programming and whatnot my story landed with the right two people, who ended up being Katie and Wanda, my two co-founders for the Legacy Project, who were also students at Tufts at that time, and we all realized that we had this similarity and this love for intergenerational connectedness, as well as this passion for storytelling, and that there was no opportunity at Tufts or really in other places and we'll get to that in a moment to do this work on a systematic basis with other college students. And so my sophomore year at Tufts, we started what was the Legacy Project at Tufts, which was a very similar model as to the model that I adopted to when I was in high school. We gathered students from the Tufts community, we found a senior community in the Medford-Somerville area, where Tufts is located, and we did an academic year-long project where students and older adults were paired, during the fall semester to do interviews and in the spring semester, to write up stories to then publish. Well, the idea was to publish a book at the end of the year with all of the stories and each person gets a chapter of the book. And so we did this for two years and it was very popular and a lot of students were excited about the work and and found that, you know, this was for many the first time that they engage with older adults outside of their family members, and they had many students had felt hesitant about the work because they weren't, you know, for one reason or another.

Arielle Galinsky:

I think we see in the media that, you know, there's just this fear of aging, sometimes even a fear to engage with older adults.

Arielle Galinsky:

That's very real and for, for a lot of these students, this was an opportunity to kind of counteract a lot of those, you know, um, preconceived notions that they had about what, what it was like to uh, uh, collaborate, or collaborate or talk across generations.

Arielle Galinsky:

And so my junior year, junior year going into senior year, wanda Katie and I started hearing from some of our peers at other schools, when we were telling them about this work, that this is something that they would like to do, but they didn't have any organization at their schools that would allow them to do this storytelling across generations.

Arielle Galinsky:

And so we were like, okay, let's create a nonprofit, let's do this so we can expand to other schools, and that's what we did. And of course we've hit road bumps along the way. But over these past two years we have grown from not just the Tufts chapter but to 14 states across the country and we've built out our volunteer national team of students, also at graduate schools, undergrad and young professionals, who are helping us grow and expand exponentially. We've also created an advisory board of just some wonderful aging advocates in the policy space, in the nonprofit space, in the media, in the media space, who have helped us so significantly in terms of how can we best, you know, talk about intergenerational programming, how can we get students and seniors on board and what are the best ways to really ensure that this is, you know, available to anyone who seeks to partake in it.

Ann Price:

So I'm curious so you have 14 chapters, then right, is that right, no 14?

Arielle Galinsky:

states, 14 states. How many chapters then? I believe it's 18 at this point. We're consistently growing Gotcha, so every day I have students.

Ann Price:

Yes, today the number is that's me. Tomorrow Gotcha, gotcha, and I guess maybe I'm making the assumption that they heard about you through social media, because it doesn't sound like it was our intent to grow. We're just doing our thing in our community, so how did people find out about you? Yeah, Originally.

Arielle Galinsky:

So. When we first started the nonprofit, we became incorporated and we sought to expand. We were doing intentional outreach. Okay, gotcha, okay, we're reaching out to students and faculty. And now we're at the point where students are reaching out to us, which is Okay, yeah.

Ann Price:

Yeah, you get that. As my friend Matt says, the flywheel effect right. Once you get some success, people want to join. I work with non-profits all the time, so I just love the way you said and so we started a nonprofit. That is just the easiest thing to do, because you actually have to assemble a board and you have to file the paperwork and you have to have an audit every year and keep the funding going in. So yeah, it's not an easy thing while you're in school.

Arielle Galinsky:

No, and it's consistently a learning process and, as someone who does not have a business background, this is definitely it's been a you know, every single day I'm learning something new. I bet. About the profit industry.

Ann Price:

I bet. So how does the Legacy Project get their funding then? Right?

Arielle Galinsky:

now we've been able to receive some grants but, as mentioned, our team right now is volunteer.

Arielle Galinsky:

Okay, gotcha, we don't have any paid staff.

Arielle Galinsky:

We're all students who just care very deeply about this work and not necessarily any of us are pursuing this full-time, although sometimes I feel like I'm wrong.

Arielle Galinsky:

Sometimes you are, yes, but right now none of us are paid a salary, but we do receive some external grants for the funding of our programming. I will also say, because we're based on chapter campuses, that allows the opportunity for some of our chapters to tap into student organizational funds at their schools. So the beauty of the Legacy Project is that the actual crux of the work that we do doesn't require a lot of financial resources. We are, you know, we have all of the resources that we've created in terms of questions and guides that the students and seniors use, the platform, the digital platform that we use. We have a partnership with an organization called Kin Capsule, which is amazing and that is free to use for students as well, because of that partnership, and so we've been very fortunate thus far that we have been able to pursue this work, even while navigating the funding challenges that are only exacerbated by the current moment. Yes, exactly.

Ann Price:

Yeah, it is a challenge to be a nonprofit in this moment for sure. I have so many questions. What do you think students get out of participating and what do you think the older folks that are involved in your project get out of this relationship?

Arielle Galinsky:

So I think the young, I'll say for both parties. So something that we really try to emphasize and that you know, if you've, if you've heard of the organization Cogenerate, which I've been a proud fellow with them for the past year and a half, and the organization is just incredible and consistently inspires me. They're basically, I would say, Generations United and Cogenerate are hubs for all of the intergenerational programming and the thought leaders for intergenerational programming in throughout the US, I say I'll say is Code Generate has this massive emphasis on bi-directional benefit in these intergenerational. I love it.

Ann Price:

Yes.

Arielle Galinsky:

Right, and so that's something that the Legacy Project has adopted heavily right. So, for both our younger and our older participants, I believe strongly that both parties are able to. You know, throughout this process of learning about one another and interviewing one another, they're better able to understand the other generation in a way that they weren't able to before. Right, because, you know, for a lot of our younger participants, as mentioned before, and older participants, the ageist stigmas that exist for both gender and for baby boomers over right Like they're strong, they're pervasive, and so when we're thinking about what this means to build a friendship over the course of a year with someone just a different age, I think both youngers and olders find that there's more commonalities than differences. I love it. They grew up in a different timeframe, that they have a lot of aligned interests and aligned passions, right Like, I think, for a lot of younger participants, they don't realize that some of the older adults that engage in this project are incredibly active in the community, that they're still working or part-time, or they're still doing advocacy or volunteer work, and so you know, there's even been mention of some, like youngers and olders doing projects together or at least getting inspired by the work that the other was doing.

Arielle Galinsky:

So for that's one massive benefit and kind of one of the whole perpetuating forces for the legacy project, beyond the storytelling and beyond the connecting generations piece, is to combat social isolation and loneliness.

Arielle Galinsky:

We know that amongst you know, we're facing a social connection crisis and that's why all of this work has kind of appeared outside of the pandemic to try to build connectedness within communities.

Arielle Galinsky:

And so TLP actively tries to support two groups which are among the hardest hit, which are older adults and younger adults, which are among the hardest hit, which are older adults and younger adults, and to create that connectivity in a novel way that college students or older adults living in senior communities might not otherwise have. So trying to bridge that social isolation and connectedness gap, and we believe that's a massive benefit. And then I will also say there's a lot of students that we hope and we are implementing program evaluation tools to be able to better evaluate all of this, um, these, a lot of this is anecdotal, right, but um, what we hope is that our program inspires them to go into the field of gerontology and at least in some city that we have a ton of students who are interested in pre, pre um, pre-med and medical school, post-college, and so if this inspires even a few of them to go into the field of gerontology, that's a win.

Arielle Galinsky:

Or if they're journalists right, we have a lot of students who are interested in writing, because the crux of our program is storytelling and writing those stories. Maybe they will spend more time dedicated to uplifting the stories of older adults in their communities.

Ann Price:

Well, I love that and you know I am an evaluator, so that makes me very happy and storytelling is legitimate, right? You know, when we think about you know people always default to surveys and quantitative data is great, right, you know you did a lot of math. You said you did a lot of math. I'm all for quantitative data, but that, that qualitative data, that storytelling is also important. And you know, let's face it, nobody marched on Washington because of a number, Right, we're moved by stories and they have a great story to tell, so I love that. So what is your hoped for future? For the Legacy Project, Right?

Arielle Galinsky:

I could also speak to my hope for the future more broadly, but it's a big thing too.

Arielle Galinsky:

Yeah, Because that's my Go for it. Okay, so for the Legacy Project specifically, my hope is that we are able to, in the next few years, grow to all 50 states and that any student and any older adult who wishes to partake in an intergenerational storytelling program is able to through the Legacy Project. And by that I mean also older adults who don't live proximate to college and university campuses. Right, We've had some olders reach out to us and say we are really interested in this, but we don't live near a college. So, like, how can we partake? And we don't want anyone to right. Arguably those are the individuals that could best you know most benefit from a type of program like this, and so we hope to create a virtual option as well for older and younger adults who wish to partake in this program. And that's my dream. Obviously, the infrastructure needs to be built out for that and whatnot, and we seek to support our in-person chapters right now as we're continuously growing. But that's my goal that anyone who wishes to have their story be heard by a younger, older adult can get that opportunity through the Legacy Project. So that's my dream for that, and then for the world no, for the US. I'll be more specific.

Arielle Galinsky:

My policy aims and what I wish to see in both my home state of Massachusetts and in the United States more broadly, is that we're able to devise a financially sustainable long-term care system that doesn't force older adults and their family members to impoverish themselves to be able to call Medicaid, Because right now, Medicaid long-term care is the only way that really that one could receive government support in covering the cost of long-term care, as Medicare does not cover long-term care, despite popular opinion, given that only 8% to 10% of Americans have private long-term care insurance because it's right now not a feasible option with the current structure.

Arielle Galinsky:

And so I believe so strongly in completely reframing how we think about long-term care in the US and coming up with a better system, and how this ties into my intergenerational work is I believe it takes an intergenerational movement to be able to achieve this right. We haven't seen much attention to long-term care nationally since the CLAS Act Dreading Affordable Care Act which for many reasons, was not a successful endeavor because it wasn't financially feasible. It's been now almost 15 years since it has reached a federal stage, and the question is, why, right? And so I think I believe that if we have a coalition of younger and older adults who are coming together to say I care about this because this is my current reality, and I also care about this because this is my parents and this is my future reality, and I care about my economic security and I care about dignity for older adults. That would be a powerful message to lawmakers, and so that is my dream for the US and for the country, and I'm consistently working towards that mission.

Ann Price:

Yeah, you know, I love that so much. And I don't think people realize that people have to, you know, disabuse themselves the right word. They literally have to get rid of all of their assets in order to qualify for that long-term care. And I don't think even people my age really have that understanding of what lies ahead of them if they're not planning Correct. Yeah, yeah, but yeah to your point. Yeah, I don't know, arielle. I really don't know why it is so hard. Why is it so hard to come together and work towards an answer? I don't know.

Arielle Galinsky:

Well, yeah, maybe you do it's quite expensive. Aging is also. It's expensive, and the problem with that is no, very few politicians want to take on something that right. How are you going to pay for it? Well, it's either increase of taxes or reducing benefits somewhere else, and that's not politically popular. But it is really important. And the number two thing is aging.

Arielle Galinsky:

Just, I say this all the time, but aging is not sexy, like it's not the hot topic, it's not the topic that anyone is like. That's going to be my driving force, except me. I talk about it all the time. It is my driving force, but I think those are kind of the two primary reasons that it doesn't give rise to the level of importance. I also will say that everyone aging.

Arielle Galinsky:

We live in a very individualistic society, whereas other countries that have far better approaches to long-term care are more community-based and we just don't have that perspective. And so, even though there's 50 plus million family caregivers in the United States, most people view it as a very individual problem. Right, they have to think about how they're going to deal with work and caring for their grandmother. They're going to have to think about how they're going to deal with work and caring for their grandmother. They're going to have to think about how they're going to cover the cost of the nursing home facility that their mother went into, but very few people think about it as a we're all dealing with the exact same thing. Why don't we come up with a better solution?

Ann Price:

Right, and there's so many countries and cultures who think about aging so differently. If you think about our Native American or indigenous peoples, they have such a value on their elders, their ancestors. If you think about Japanese people, how they view older people, how valued they are as community members, I can think of countries in South America where there aren't, there is no such thing as assisted living or nursing homes, because there is an industry that supports in-home care. There are other ways to kind of think about helping people. You know age in place as best they can, and I know that is not for everybody.

Ann Price:

We've certainly had that with my husband's grandmother. They kept her at home as long as they possibly could until it was not safe for her right, and then they found a very lovely community center. It was a nursing home but you walked in and it did not smell, if you know what I mean. So you knew that everybody was clean and healthy. They had grown up with her. They knew her by name. It was very much a neighborhood community feel to the place where she spent. You know her last few years. So I imagine you know I can imagine all sorts of ways we could think about aging creatively.

Arielle Galinsky:

Yeah, my research focuses on international systems of long-term care.

Arielle Galinsky:

I love it, yeah, and so I spent, and in part, I was driven to want to experience this firsthand. So, earlier this year actually, I spent about two weeks in Japan, in large part to be able to tour nursing homes and to better understand their aging systems. And it is amazing, even in the quote unquote, more institutional settings the focus on independence as one ages, regardless if they have memory loss or regardless of what their physical conditions are. This desire and this implementation of to continue for older adults to continue to be independent as much as possible is incredible. One of the facilities that I visited it was all individuals who had medium to severe dementia, and yet they all cooked their own meals. No way. Yes, they had supervision, but I walked into the room and they were all cooking their own meals because there's a belief that if you provide opportunities to remain independent, those are skills and those are things that individuals have done their whole lives.

Arielle Galinsky:

And yet in the US we have a very different approach. Maybe that's because we have massive shortages of direct care workforce that as does Japan, but in the US that there's this feeling of we need to, you know, do the most critical things and we can't provide opportunities for other things like supervision of watching one cook, right, but I will say I've never seen that in the United States and a United States nursing facility or a memory care facility. And it was really beautiful also that all of the doors of this facility were open, like someone could just walk in or out, and that was okay because there was a belief that these individuals, you know, have the independence to do that. And the place that my grandmother lived in for the last three years was locked. Every door is locked on the way out. Just a very different approach, right.

Ann Price:

Yeah to your point. I wish in the US we would just be a little more open about other ways to do things right. We can learn so much from other countries and other cultures if we would just, you know, open up a little bit and explore, like you did, and get curious how could this be done differently? My best friend is trying to do her best to keep her 93-year-old father in his— he built an apartment next to his—they call it the big house. It's not a big house, but that's what he calls it. And he built this self-contained apartment for himself. Yeah, and she's. She's needing to have the difficult conversation with him about you really can't drive anymore, and it's hard because she's an only child. There's nobody else to like. You know, help her have these difficult conversations, but she's doing her best to do just that. Help him be as independent as possible for as long as he can, that's beautiful yeah.

Ann Price:

Yeah, absolutely so. I know you've got to get to class, so let's try to wrap this up. Is there anything else you want to share, either about the Legacy Project or the work you hope to do in the future?

Arielle Galinsky:

No, I'll just plug one thing.

Arielle Galinsky:

I will say if you are interested at all in this idea of intergenerational connectedness as a mechanism for doing anything right I care about aging, but I believe that intergenerational collaboration can be an impetus for any area of civic change.

Arielle Galinsky:

And so if you believe in this, or if you aren't currently involved intergenerationally in your own community but you wish to start pursuing opportunities to do so, one of my passion projects that I was able to launch under Cogenerate is called the let's Make Next Gen CoGen Pledge, and basically what it is.

Arielle Galinsky:

It's a pledge. On their website, you can look up CoGen Pledge and it takes two seconds and you can sign up for the pledge and it will send you all of these ideas for how you can live a more intergenerational lifestyle in your day-to-day community. And so I will say I'll plug that and I can certainly provide you that information too. But it's an awesome way to start, and, I think, in a very approachable manner, because I think there's this idea that you have to start your own organization, create something massive for it to be impactful. But really it starts on the day-to-day community level, and I think if we started having dinners with older adults or younger adults, or our book club was intergenerational, or that you know, at the park, our cleanup day, we ask older adults or younger adults to join in that work. It could be so much power Right.

Ann Price:

Very powerful. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So what is giving you hope these days, ariel? What is giving you?

Arielle Galinsky:

hope that's an interesting question in this current political moment.

Ann Price:

It is.

Arielle Galinsky:

I would say. Recently we saw the big, beautiful bill right, which wasn't so beautiful, in my opinion. Seeing all of the aging disability community of advocates of all these organizations, but also just like individual advocates, coming together to coalesce against potential harmful cuts to these communities that we care so deeply about and that our work is dedicated to that brought me a lot of hope, because I knew that, no matter where these policies are going in the current moment, that, as someone who cares so deeply about these issues, I will always have this community of people who also resonates and who I can work in collaboration with to try to drive forward positive change.

Ann Price:

So I want to ask you the question I ask all my guests when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?

Arielle Galinsky:

all my guests. When you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see? Well, maybe, if my all of my answers probably hinted towards this, but I see a future where intergenerational collaboration is the norm. It's not our current future, but that is my dream future, and I believe that in religious communities and educational communities, that in religious communities and educational communities, you know, within neighborhoods and advocacy spaces, that if we seek to do this work without generational divides, it will also seek to mend some of the other polarization that we see so strongly in these communities and that we can just have more positive outcomes. And so that's my belief for the future of community collaboration.

Ann Price:

Yeah, connectedness and collaboration. I think you're right. The more we do that, the more we will be able to kind of move forward together. Right, absolutely. So how can people learn more about the Legacy Project or get in touch with you?

Arielle Galinsky:

Yep. So if you wish to get in touch with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, arielle Galinsky. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn. Feel free to message me at any point and my email's also on the LinkedIn page. If you want to learn more about the Legacy Project LegacyProjectIncorg and you can find all about the work that we do, the states and the chapters that we're currently operating in, there's also our email on that website. So if you would like to reach out to us, please feel free. We're always happy to talk to students interested in starting chapters. Talk to administrators and professors who want to start a program at their school, as well as senior communities who might be interested in partnering with us to get a chapter in your community. So yeah, please reach out. Awesome.

Ann Price:

And I will put a link to the Legacy Project, and I think you mentioned another link. Yeah, so I will be happy to put those in the show Project, and I think you mentioned another link. Yeah, so I will be happy to put those in the show notes. Ariel, I know you're very busy with starting law school and you got to get to class, but thank you so much for joining me today. I hate that I won't get to meet you because I'm in the Metro Atlanta area, but I know you're going to knock it out of the park and people are really going to enjoy hearing from you.

Arielle Galinsky:

I'll be back at the American Society on Aging conference, which is also in Atlanta.

Ann Price:

Oh, yay, awesome. Oh, I would love to connect in person. If you have time, please stay in touch and let me hear from you. Will do. Thanks, sam. All right, thanks for coming Bye.

Ann Price:

Hi everybody, thanks for listening to today's episode of Community Possibilities. You know, running a nonprofit can feel a lot like bowling without bumpers, and if you're anything like me, boy, you need those bumpers. You line everything up, you give it your best shot and you hope that ball stays on course. But with so many moving parts, you know what I mean Outcomes, activities, community meetings, data collection, reporting, managing your staff, gathering, participant feedback and oh yeah, let's not forget funding. Funding is so much fun right now, isn't it?

Ann Price:

It's so easy for things to get off track. Even with the best intention. It's easy to get pulled into the day-to-day work and lose sight of whether or not you are really making a difference. One small misstep in planning, a missed data point or just unclear goals can just throw everything off.

Ann Price:

But evaluation isn't about pointing fingers or adding more paperwork. It's about learning what truly makes a difference. And, done right, evaluation becomes less of a hoop to jump through and more of a compass guiding your mission. To help you through the process. Check out our digital resource, the Nonprofit Program Evaluation Checklist. You can find it on our website at communityevaluationsolutionscom. Just check out our resource page. Think of it as your set of bumpers, keeping your efforts on track, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks and guiding your organization towards measurable, lasting change. Want to go deeper on evaluation? Take your skills to the next level with our online course Powerful Evidence Evaluation for Non-Evaluators. It will teach you how to plan, measure, analyze and use those evaluation results effectively, even if you've never done it before. And lastly, as always, please like and share this episode. It helps so much. Thanks, everybody, and I'll see you next time.

Ann Price:

Thank you.