The Legacy Project's Origin

The concept of The Legacy Project (TLP) began in 2018, when Arielle Galinsky, a high school junior at the time, spent her time working at a local older adult community in her Massachusetts hometown. Her role allowed her to interact with the residents, which she greatly enjoyed, yet she always left her shift with a strong desire to learn more about the stories of the older adults she met. With this strong curiosity paired with a deep sense of regret she felt having lost her own grandfathers at a young age, Arielle decided to spearhead TLP as a personal project.

The initiative encompassed conducting thorough interviews of 18 residents living in the community with the intention to hold a ceremony at the finale of the project to provide her older friends with the opportunity to share their stories with their families. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Arielle pivoted and decided the best way to preserve the 18 captivating stories of the seniors she interviewed was through prose.

Parallel Stories Unite

Little did she know that, in the state over from her, Katie Furey, a sophomore in college who was home for the pandemic, started a similar project of her own. Katie had always been close with her grandmother, Mary, who was living in a nursing home at the time of the pandemic. When Katie and her family would visit Mary and her neighbors from outside the window of the nursing home, waving frantically through the glass and chatting on the phone, Katie wished there was a way for young people like herself to connect more deeply with these wonderful people on the other side of the glass who were experiencing a loneliness perhaps even more pronounced than the loneliness Katie and her peers were facing as the pandemic escalated.

The United Nations Millennium Fellowship hosted through Tufts University presented a perfect opportunity for Katie to put her idea into action. Using the program's framework, Katie partnered with an older adult living community in Connecticut. Katie met ten older adults from the home on Zoom, connecting with them and learning tidbits of their life stories, and she later compiled these recording into a video shared with the participants.

Collaboration & Expansion
Arielle and Katie met in 2020, quickly connecting over their aligned passions to build intergenerational connections, provide a platform for local older adults to share their stories, and preserve such histories through their collective love for writing.

They decided to start the Tufts Legacy Project, the first chapter of The Legacy Project, Inc., which was based out of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, with the goal of connecting college students one-on-one with older adults living in their local community.

When Katie decided to join the Millennium Fellowship for a second year, she met Wanda Schlumpf, a sophomore at Tufts, who was similarly dedicated to the value of storytelling. Wanda took on the project with her and joined the Tufts TLP chapter as a founding member. Together, the three women helped to build it into an organization of nearly 30 students passionate about empowering both younger and older adults with the platform to amplify their stories.

TLP's National Vision

After watching the Tufts chapter grow and carefully researching the need for nationwide intergenerational storytelling programming, Arielle, Katie, and Wanda decided to found TLP as a nonprofit organization with the goal of spreading their mission across the country: connecting younger and older generations who might not otherwise have the opportunity to meet or share their stories.

TLP seeks to build sustainable, intergenerational connections as a means of combatting social isolation and loneliness, preserving the stories of both older and younger adults, engaging young individuals in revolutionizing perspectives on aging, and ensuring that every individual has the opportunity to share their experiences.