Education/Mentorship
Elder-Corps offers quality education that provides traditional content carefully integrated with psychological and earth based consciousness. This is a great challenge here in the US and in
many countries around the world today especially in this time that has been called ‘the great forgetting.” For this reason, the Elder-Corps and its faculty will focus on assisting individuals and communities around the world to regain this depth of educational focus. It will do so by using new educational models that blend content with consciousness, new forms of information delivery and new models of cross- generational collaboration. This program also offers practical work/ study projects that build greater levels of community, empowerment, and sustainability.
Elder Development
In the near future, for the first time ever, 50% of people in the industrialized nations will be aged 50 and over. Meanwhile, in most parts of the industrialized world the elderly are largely being marginalized and their wisdom and experience sadly disregarded. An increasing number of Boomers/Seniors, while aging chronologically, remain vibrant intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. At the same time others risk aging chronologically but not necessarily in other areas. Therefore a central tenet in the Elder-Corps mission is to provide older Americans with the opportunity to re-engage in learning, reconnect with a greater sense of meaning and purpose, and rejoin those who are called ‘elders’ and who are aging with greater consciousness. Our vision is to create an initiatory pathway in our time that will re- activate the ancient sense of what it meant to be an ‘elder.’
Well Being – Addiction Recovery
Enhancing the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being of those who participate in and will be served by Elder-Corps is a primary goal. It involves creating and implementing new strategies to support and heal those who suffer from the many forms of addiction that impact life today. It includes veterans of past wars, individuals currently on active duty who suffer from addictions related to undiagnosed and untreated conditions, older Americans who have become addicted to prescriptions drugs (one of the fastest growing segments of addiction), youth at risk, and individuals in economically challenged urban environments.
New Earth Consciousness
The challenges facing our planet are substantial. Many have been exacerbated during the time that older GenXers and Boomers have been at the helm. It is only appropriate that the Elder-Corps should proactively help these generations to understand the environmental dynamics at play, deepen their appreciation for a
‘new earth consciousness,’ and explore alternative life strategies and steps to a sane and sustainable future. Birthing a new earth consciousness happens when we submit to the wisdom of the circle of life. Such a return is a central task of the initiated elder.
Civic Engagement/Community Development Global Citizenship
The Elder-Corps encourages and prepares students, staff and volunteers to participate in on-the-ground projects to perform their assignments based on new strategies of constructive civic engagement, community development, individual empowerment, and conscious global citizenship.
Life Transitions
The dawning demographic revolution dramatically shifts the number of world citizens aged 50 and older alive today. It requires an equally dramatic shift in the way we view all life’s transitions, especially those in the second half of life and our departure from the physical plane. The Elder-CorpsTM initiative will explore new forms of second half of life initiations, and alternative strategies to assist individuals, organizations and cultures to make these transitions with greater ease and consciousness.
Legacy Development
The Elder-CorpsTM initiative will evolve new legacies derived from cultural traditions, stories, oral and written histories. It defines the wisdom of elders within various traditions to help transmit information, wisdom and experience to future generations.