The business
InCommon is a social enterprise that brings generations together, through delivering intergenerational programmes, mainly working with schools and retirement homes in 3 ways: our primary school Connect programmes, social action programmes and by sharing our resources with others.
The challenge
We have both had really important intergenerational relationships throughout our lives – and feel lucky to have benefitted so much from relationships with grandparents and older friends from when we were younger. It’s important for all people involved, for a number of reasons, such as helping well-being and emotional health that as we move into even more age divided societies, these relationships continue.
To figure out our approach, we asked lots of older people how they wanted to stay connected to their community in later life. The feedback we received placed interacting with children and young people as a priority, especially for those who don’t have families where they can interact with younger generations.
The impact
Currently, we work with around 500 people across Greater London. Our mission is to build connected and age friendly communities. Building an online platform to support our work will help us connect even more schools with older generations. This will have other positive impacts such as strengthening relationships within the older participants as they come together regularly to take part in our programmes, boosting well-being and supporting children’s emotional learning.
We joined the DIF x Allia Accelerator Challenge to develop our online platform. Currently, we are a team of 6 but we’re hoping to scale up to share our work with a wider audience. The mentoring will be particularly useful with respect to financial modelling, marketing and operations, HR, and fundraising.
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