One of the significant concerns we have seen is that young people often don't feel like they have been asked to participate in the community. They feel like it is a domain that is for perhaps an older demographic.
We think there are great advantages to bringing older people and younger people together in volunteering. We have recently identified through some research that the landscape of intergenerational volunteering programs across the country is very chaotic and disparate. Individuals who are really advancing intergenerational initiatives across the country are often themselves aging out and older, and they lack the kinds of organizational infrastructure necessary.
To get back to your question about youth, specifically, though, I think asking youth is critical. Supporting youth with any kind of honorarium relative to their travel costs is important because they are experiencing costs relative to participation. Also, it's important to recognize that the youth themselves have skills, whether they be technological skills or different kinds of design thinking skills, for instance, that are new and cutting-edge ways of solving complex problems.
I think youth bring different skills and capacities to the table. Older adults also have the perspective of wisdom. Bringing those two demographics together, I think, holds huge promise. There is an opportunity to re-engage youth and build a culture of service across this country that we haven't seen in many decades.