Bridging the Gap Between Elders and Youth

When we woke up this morning we weren’t sure what we were going to do for the day. Our service project starts tomorrow so we had a day free. While we were taking turns getting into the shower the members of the Shepards ? Center, began arriving for their daily activities. The building we are staying in, The Carrollton United Methodist Center, houses not only the churches direct activities but supports a number of other local organizations: The Uptown Shepard's Center is a senior citizen center for people living aroudn the church; The Twomey center is a part of Loyola University that does a variety of local and international social justice work. For more information on their work go to (http://www.loyno.edu/twomey/).

After explaining who were and what we had come to do. The director of the Center told us that there was a drama group that started at 9:30pm and that they would love to have us join them. Ms. Inga was a member of the group and told us that she thought they would love to have us in the group – so we decided to come.

We came in the room, set up the chairs and then everyone introduced themselves. We told them what Project HIP-HOP stands for, and even though none them seemed to know what hip hop culture was, they seemed interested in what we were doing. The group was very energetic and young at heart. The instructor invited us to lead a warm-up exercise. Then we broke up into groups to do scenes. One group had worked on a scene for homework, so those of us who had not been there before had 5 min to create an intergenerational scene.

Our scene demonstrated a conflict between young people and elders. We played out a scene where seniors were sitting on the bus and young people got on after-school and were overly excited about going to Mardi Gras. At first the elders were just annoyed by the noise and were asking the youth to be quiet; however, when they realized that the youth were talking about Mardi Gras they started sharing about their first Mardi Gras experiences. The play ended with the youth and elders coming together around their common experience and talking about how they could communicate better in the future.

We enjoyed the chance to do drama, and it was good chance to bridge the gap between elderly people and youth. Everyone told us that we have to come back in time for their play in April. Maybe we will?