Sharing Our Space
A Toolkit for Developing and Enhancing Intergenerational Shared Sites
What Are Shared Sites?
Intergenerational shared sites are intentionally designed places that provide services/programs to multiple generations concurrently and foster meaningful cross-age relationships. Participants interact in planned intergenerational activities as well as through informal encounters. Shared sites have built-in opportunities for cost-efficiencies in terms of sharing space, personnel, rent, and other costs.
Why Are They Needed Now?
Communities face growing challenges: aging populations, stretched families, limited child care, and workforce shortages in both aging services and early childhood care. Social isolation affects people of all ages, reducing opportunities for connection, support, and learning across generations.
Intergenerational shared sites address these needs by bringing people of all ages together under one roof. They strengthen relationships, expand resources, and create spaces where children, youth, and older adults can learn, play, and support each other — building stronger, healthier, and more resilient communities.
How Can This Toolkit Help Me?
If you are interested in developing a new intergenerational shared site or want to enhance an existing site, this Toolkit is for you. Based on research and the experiences of practitioners in the intergenerational field, this Toolkit includes effective practices, challenges, tips, examples, and concrete tools that will help you in your planning and implementation efforts. Although it focuses primarily on facilities that engage older adults with young children (toddlers through Kindergarten), many of the promising practices and tips are relevant for other populations and settings.
What Do Shared Sites Look Like?
ONEgeneration Senior Enrichment Center and Intergenerational Program in the San Fernando Valley of California includes day-care and a preschool serving more than 150 children under age 6.
St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care in Wisconsin, specializes in adult and child day services in a safe, homelike intergenerational setting, where compassion, care and dignity are key. It brings all ages together, from 6 weeks old to 100-plus.
Providence Mount St. Vincent, a home for 400 older adults in Washington State, also includes the Intergenerational Learning Center which provides child-care designed to encourage spontaneous interaction among generations. Adults and children can play with toys in the lobby, participate in singalongs, and more.
Kendal at Oberlin in Ohio offers independent living, memory support, assisted living and nursing care for over 350 older adults living on the campus and connects with children from the on-site Kendal Early Learning Center (age 3 years to 1st grade) and students from nearby Oberlin College.
Start Exploring...
SECTION 1
Overview
SECTION 2
Planning
SECTION 3
Designing
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Funding
SECTION 5
Marketing
SECTION 6
Staffing
SECTION 7
Building Relationships
SECTION 8
Evaluating
SECTION 9
Sustaining
SECTION 10
Beyond Child Care