(March 8, 2024) Growing up in Chicago, Maya Joshi’s favourite memories revolved around learning to paint and weave with her grandparents. This passion for the visual arts stemmed from her early childhood. But when the COVID-19-induced pandemic in 2020 called for a worldwide lockdown, the Indian-American teen found it hard to access her grandparents. This isolation “kindled the idea of expanding social connection by using technology and willing volunteers” and led to the birth of Lifting Hearts with the Arts.
Maya Joshi is the founder of Lifting Hearts With Arts
Lifting seniors out of isolation
Seeing the senior population facing social isolation, she decided to bridge the gap by expanding social gaps between youth and senior citizens. “We try to connect the seniors with high school volunteers through technology and through the arts in an effort to lift their spirits and improve their mental health,” she said in an interview.
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It was the shelter-in-place order in Illinois that prompted her to come up with the idea. “When it hit, I thought about my grandparents, and how I couldn’t meet them in person. I thought about how I spent so much of my early childhood going over to their house, especially weaving with my grandmother and painting with the grandpa,” she added. Manya saw how happy her grandparents were when they got video and phone calls and wanted to share the same joy with as many senior citizens as possible. “I knew that I needed to create a program to facilitate my idea,” she revealed, adding that it became a dining table conversation with her family who turned out to be her support system. They soon outlined goals and started reaching out to senior living facilities and their high school friends to build Lifting Hearts with the Arts.
In April 2020, it came into action with the mission to engage the community through intergenerational learning with the arts. “In youth, art helps foster creative thinking, boosts self-esteem, and establishes a sense of accomplishment. In adult populations, art can prevent cognitive decline by improving memory, reasoning, and resilience,” reads their website.
Bridging the gap and community building
When Maya began her first virtual meetings with the residents, she was a little skeptical of breaking the ice with them. However, she realised that it was actually very easy. Sharing an experience, she said, “One day, I was hosting a trivia game for a group of 6 residents via Zoom, and we started talking about languages the residents took in high school. I told them that I was taking Latin, not expecting anyone to have taken it. It turned out that all 6 of them had taken Latin in high school,” adding, “We started reminiscing about texts that we had all read in school, and they even offered some advice for translating some of Virgil and Caesar’s texts!”
It was her parents in whom she found her first mentors, who guided her at every step. “My grandparents have been my biggest cheerleaders and were the organization’s first followers on Facebook,” revealed Maya, who is currently studying at Princeton University.
Understanding its ramifications, they pair high school students with seniors at long-term care facilities for one-on-one and group activities to build long-term friendships on the basis of mutual interests. The activities include playing games, painting or drawing together, sharing cooking/baking recipes, or listening to music.
Explaining one of the group activities ‘Name that Tune’ with the seniors, Maya said that volunteers play the first one minute of a song and the residents need to guess the name and artist. “Some of our high school volunteers weren’t sure what decade to play music from. After talking to several of the seniors, we found that 40s and 60s music was the most popular. In fact, I have found a new love for the musical jams of the 50s and 60s,” she added.
Taking the next step
After its success during the pandemic, in the fall of 2023, CoGen Creations was yet another program that was introduced to “encourage open communication to counteract stereotypes and increase understanding between generations.” Based on mutual interests and hobbies, it pairs ten high school students with ten senior residents at a local care facility in Chicago where they meet during an ice cream social or create a first art piece together. It gives them a chance to get to know each other better by engaging in a dialogue and by expressing themselves through dialogue. “The hope is that seniors and students might build long-lasting, intergenerational friendships that will enrich their lives.”
In the last few years, Lifting Hearts with the Arts has been on a mission to use the arts to connect seniors and youth through virtual or in-person activities to build long-lasting friendships. Interestingly, the organisation is now expanding the program for college students too. “Finding common grounds with seniors has helped the volunteers develop empathy.”
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