This semester, a group of students at Florida Gulf Coast University has been working on a project that’s focused on addressing the loneliness epidemic amongst our senior citizen and Gen Z populations, while promoting more kindness and compassion through storytelling.
The ROCK of Ages initiative is a partnership between the FGCU’s Roots of Compassion and Kindness (ROCK) Center, the university’s Shady Rest Institute on Positive Aging, and a storytelling media company called Existential Co.
Social isolation is one of the main issues many seniors are facing these days, and the in-person social skills of so-called digital natives have suffered. The ROCK of Ages Initiatives seeks to address these problems by pairing students with older people to share stories, on camera, to build bridges between generations and create transformative experiences that hopefully create ripple effects of social change.
We talk three of the people who are the driving forces behind the ROCK of Ages initiative.
Guests:
Dr. Maria Roca, Director of the FGCU Roots of Compassion & Kindness (ROCK) Center
Dr. Tom Felke, Executive Director of the FGCU Shady Rest Institute on Positive Aging
Jameson Yingling, founder of Existential Co and an FGCU grad
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