Intergenerational Workshop

The aims were for both to learn about resilience from each other, and simply for them to interact in a fun environment.

The first activity involved working in pairs, where the older person told the child about his or her experiences of surviving a disaster. The children’s task was to ‘pretend to be a reporter’ and listen to the story, ask questions, and finally to draw whatever captured their imagination.

Surprisingly, the conversations turned into a wider exchange of life experiences, with the children asking about the older person’s childhood, their families, and other events in their lives. In turn, the children told the older person about what they liked to do and problems they had at home. They were so immersed in these conversations that we had to extend this section of the workshop.

Children drawing what caught their attention the most in the stories they heard from older people (April 2022).

The second part of the workshops involved playing traditional games such as hopscotch, jacks, and rope. The children had never seen jacks and the older women (apparently this is a girls’ game in Chile) taught them. No matter the age, everyone likes to play, and the games brought the different generations together in a fun and low-stakes way.

Older women teaching children how to play jacks.

Playing rope