Pima County

The Pima County Communities for All Ages initiative began as a small local initative in the Tuscon neighborhood of South Park, 60 miles north of the Mexican border. The goal of the Communities for All Ages team in South Park was to make the neighborhood a place where people of all ages worked and played together in comfortable community spaces. The team built resident leadership through intergenerational activities which addressed key concerns of residents and raised the “voices” of residents. Intergenerational teams were given special mini grants to assist with projects that the community designed and implemented. This model was so successful that one of the key members in the South Park Communities for All Ages team, PRO neighborhoods, made a number of long term changes to their organizational strategy and systems to incorporate an intergenerational lens into all of their community organizing work. As a result, resident leadership is now being developed through intergenerational collaborations throughout the entire county of Pima. Pima County includes over a million residents.

New alliances between community residents, local organizations, government and businesses across the county have emerged that are developing intergenerational leadership and alliances in neighborhood communities. In these coalitions and neighborhood groups, intergenerational strategies are intentionally cultivated and encouraged. 115 local communities in Pima County have received community organizing grants from PRO neighborhoods and been trained on how to bring residents of all ages to the table when developing local initiatives.