- L
- R
- A
Since 2021, over 250 seniors from Mandarin Senior Center and students at Crown Point Elementary in Jacksonville, Florida, have been paired as pen pals in The Dialogue Journal Project (DJ Project), making new friends and sharing life stories in a weekly journal exchange. To help keep conversations flowing, each week specially-designed prompts were designed and pasted in each journal to help spark meaningful interaction. The whole process had a lot of moving parts, but it paid off big time as the project, fueled solely by volunteer determination, grew and developed.
The DJ Project effort has proven to be win-win-win... for seniors, for students, and for educational efforts to make learning relevant! Because it's so valued and beloved by participants, this fall I want to print ready-to-use journals and make the DJ Project program simpler to execute and easier to share, and enable these age-defying friendships between seniors and kids anytime, anywhere!
Your contribution will help cover printing costs to make more senior/student pen pal pairs possible, and fund continued program development.
The Dialogue Journal Project: FYI
Objectives:
- Generate a sense of purpose and community in participants.
- Offer ready-to-use journals for pen pals to share, with age-appropriate weekly writing prompts
- Reinforce reading and writing skills in an authentic, meaningful context for students.
- Give kids an avenue for consistent, encouraging, positive interaction with a caring older adult.
- Provide seniors with relationships, weekly correspondence, and opportunities to share wisdom and memories.
- Help participants get to know someone from a different generation and background.
- Connect participants with the wider world!