The Cornell Crisis Advice Project (CCAP) offers an enriching activity for youth groups. We have found that the youth enjoy interviewing older adults and find the older adult’s wisdom and advice to be useful.

By crisis we mean a period of time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger. Crises can be experienced as negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal, or environmental affairs of an individual, group, community, or whole society. However, we are particularly interested in the older adult’s personal experience of such a crisis.

While many elders will share their own advice, we are also encouraging young people to reach out to and interview an elder or older adult they know – grandparents and other family members, neighbors, church members, former teachers - regarding the elder’s advice about living through a crisis. The youth can then share that advice on the for youth interviewing older adults page. They can share in writing or can video or audio tape their interview and upload those files. Photos of the interview pair are also welcome! We will be posting interviews on the Read Advice page.

We have extensive experience with youth interviews of elders through our Building a Community Legacy Together (BCLT). The BCLT is an intergenerational program for youth and older adults where the youth interview elders about their general advice for living. We have developed a detailed manual for this program that includes an evidence-based curriculum for the youth regarding interviewing skills. Please feel free to download a copy of our free manual from our BCLT website.

The BCLT program curriculum may be more than you have time or resources for at this time. No problem, you can use that curriculum to inform what you can do at this time. There is no requirement to follow it exactly. We have also developed a short CCAP Guide for Interviewing that includes some basic information about interviewing including tips for eliciting in-depth responses from interviewees. We highly recommend reading through that guide.

Regardless of whether you are thinking of a short project where the youth you work with find an older adult on their own and interview them about living through a crisis OR you decide to do something more extensive using some of the curriculum we have developed, PLEASE ask the youth to share what they learned in their interviews. They can do so on the for youth interviewing older adults page on this website. All responses may be posted to the Read Advice page!

Thank you in advance for engaging young people with the Cornell Crisis Advice Project!