In 2004, a group of African- American ministers in St. Petersburg was looking for a way to keep some at-risk teens in the Midtown neighborhood off the streets and get them more involved with their community. Pastor Henry Payne of the Southside Tabernacle Baptist Church suggested the group take a look at The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast's teen volunteer programs in the northern, suburban part of the county.

There, volunteer high school students from Palm Harbor University High School were videotaping hospice patients, manning hospice thrift shops and delivering flowers to the dying. The same sorts of volunteer opportunities could be extended to African-American teens in the inner city, Payne thought.

The Clearwater-based hospice agreed, and the project began in December 2004 with 14 teens from Midtown who named their group the Hospice Youth Providing Encouragement (HYPE). A $52,100 donation from the Eckerd Family Foundation in mid-2005 provided funding for HYPE to start its own film project, which it calls "Lifetime Legacies."

HYPE volunteers work in pairs to produce videos of hospice patients' lives. One serves as cameraman while the other interviews the patient. The teams then edit and produce the film, often incorporating photographs of the patient and personal mementos.

New HYPE recruit Nicholas Williams, a lanky 16-year-old who attends St. Petersburg High School, spends upward of six to eight hours at a time filming and editing movies about the lives of complete strangers. Williams, whose grandfather died in 1996 under hospice care, says he enjoys talking with the elders about their experiences and working with the video and computer equipment. He recalls interviewing an elderly man struggling with Alzheimer's disease. "He couldn't remember his wife's name, but he seemed to have a real firm remembrance of playing football during high school. ... It's interesting getting old, sometimes."

Other HYPE teens have also formed what they call "cheer teams," which help patients with art projects. Some read stories. Others showcase their dancing and singing talents for seniors in nursing homes and hospitals.

Eleanor Pritchard, a widow who resides in South Pasadena in southern Pinellas County, says the video that HYPE students put together just before her 80-year-old husband, Geoffrey, died last May provided comfort in his final hours. The film also gave Pritchard additional insight into the man she had married four years earlier. "He had a couple lives I wasn't aware of, that I wasn't part of. I didn't know that much about that, and for him to have the opportunity to tell the highlights of his life, and to have that keepsake, is just priceless."

The hospice-based program is just one of many across Florida in which intergenerational mentoring has become a two-way exchange, moving beyond the reading-skill and literacy mentoring that older people have traditionally provided to teens.

Six high schools in south Miami-Dade County have partnered with the Social Security Administration, AARP and Gray Panthers of South Dade to run the Intergenerational Social Security-Economic Studies Program. The program facilitates forums where senior citizens can discuss Social Security-related issues with students, ranging from financial planning to political activism. Ramona Frischman, service-learning program manager for Miami-Dade public schools, says school officials launched the program after realizing that at least one student in nearly every classroom relied on Social Security benefits. "They're learning so much from elders -- how much it matters to be active and involved," says Frischman.

Francisco Pardo, a graduate of South Miami High School in his second year at the George Washington University, says he would have had little exposure to older generations of Americans if it weren't for the intergenerational programs he was exposed to in the Miami-Dade school system. Pardo, who is majoring in political science, says an intergenerational political forum about state legislative candidates he attended several years ago was particularly enlightening. "It was really cool because most of them were really funny and had interesting perspectives, and they were really blunt," he says.

Florida is a "perfect laboratory" for these sorts of programs, says advocate Jack Levine, because it is so economically, ethnically and culturally diverse. Currently, 74% of all Floridians over age 25 are from another nation or state, and the state inherits lots of grandparents. "We are basically a state of strangers," says Levine, founder of the 4Generations Institute. "When you don't know your neighbors and you are isolated, a problem can result in a crisis."

Other Intergenerational Programs

Jacksonville: All Saints Early Learning and Community Care Center
Seniors and preschoolers eat, conduct science experiments, dance, sing and do puzzles together. Sponsored by All Saints Episcopal Church and the United Way of Northeast Florida, the center has the first intergenerational day-care program established in the Southeastern U.S. and is the only such program in northeast Florida.

Jackson County: Project F.A.S.T. Service
Organized by the Hope School, the program puts 18 students with physical and cognitive disabilities to work in the lobbies and other public areas of nursing homes so students can test the skills they've learned in vocational classes. The eighth- through 12thgraders clean residents' apartments, maintain plants on the apartment grounds and sew pillows, place mats, tablecloths and napkins for residents.

West Palm Beach: Intergenerational Bonding
At the Gold Coast School, students in the culinary arts and sciences program help a local soup kitchen prepare meals and work in a community garden, using the food and donations to create and deliver meals to elderly and shut-ins. Students also help residents in a 250-unit assisted living community with their daily chores.

Miami: Youth and Elderly Against Crime
Students perform skits at retirement villages, churches and other locations to inform seniors about scams and frauds that target the elderly. On the flip side, the seniors have helped generate an anti-bullying initiative aimed at reducing violence in schools by focusing on conflict resolution techniques, including peer mediation and parent training. Five Miami schools participate in conjunction with local law enforcement officials and the Miami-Dade County Consumer Services Division.

Miami: Oral Histories
Students learn interviewing methods and camera techniques while interviewing local citizens who might have served in World War II, lived through the Civil Rights era or witnessed the Miami Beach jazz scene. Oral histories are added to local archives. The school district partners with the University of Miami Institute for Public History and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida International University.

Miami: Team Palmetto
To help bridge the "digital divide," tech-savvy Palmetto Senior High School students provide computer training for elderly citizens.