What an idea: Preschool and Nursing Home a Perfect Combination

This is a great story, both in content and in illustrating the principal Slingshot concepts in action – to drive social change. It involves bringing together the very young and the very old – so they can give each other what they need the most.

In my book ‘Slingshot’, I make mention of a school that one day started to take its students across the street to a nursing home to have its residents tutor the children.  Within weeks the elderly’s morale and the student’s reading skills were much improved.  Now we see a new manifestation of this seemingly strange combination, as a nursing home in Seattle is also serving as a preschool.  The results for both the very young and the very old have been remarkable.

The experiment is also a great example of the Slingshot concepts in action: Turning Pain Points into Points of Infatuation (transforming isolated and marginalized elderly into valued companions and sources of wisdom for the very young), stretching the definition of a nursery home (from a place of sad isolation to that of vibrant interaction), and making use of the innovation shortcut by combining two seemingly incompatible components (the very old and the very young).

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