Inter-generational mentoring: a win-win approach for disenfranchised youth and the aged

This chapter considers a successful inter-generational partnership that brought together a group of older men in the community with marginalised youth through a mentoring program which focussed initially on building oracy and literacy skills for these young people. In this community partnership, senior members of the older men's group worked closely with the Flexi School students to share learning and activities as a regular part of the school program. The older men mentors informally modelled specific social interactions, which focused on critical aspects of acculturation. The mentoring program seems to have augmented its original focus on oracy and literacy to become a mechanism for the young people to deal with the 'strains of acculturation' - which in most cases are quite extreme. This program may represent a community capacity building model which could be used in other communities. A second feature of this chapter is the 'story' provided by one of the authors of his experience before and after participating as a mentor in the program. It represents a powerful example of what it might mean to understand individual and group roles as part of the problem of alienation in contemporary society and what they need to do to be part of the solution