Anna Aseltine peered at her computer screen: a grid of Zoom squares, populated by three other residents of the Sunny View Retirement Community and a handful of Bay Area teenagers.
“Are any of you from India?” Aseltine asked.
One of the teenagers, Vibha Sathish Kumar, 14, nodded, and they started comparing notes: Aseltine was born in Kerala, and Sathish Kumar’s parents brought her to the United States when she was just a few months old.
It was a small moment of connection in an hour designed to do just that. Aseltine and Sathish Kumar were participating in a call through Youth x Senior Buddies, an organization launched by four Bay Area high school and college students to connect students and senior citizens for cross-generational social interactions.
The students — two sets of siblings, Shrinandan and Sindhuja Narayanan and Sahith and Sriya Kudaravalli — have partnered with The Parkview in Pleasanton and Sunny View in Cupertino to host regular Zoom calls, each of which bring together a group of the senior citizens to talk with some of Youth x Senior Buddies’ dozen volunteers.
The calls usually start off with a musical performance from one of the students or a TED talk to facilitate the discussion. After that, the direction of the conversation is up to its participants.
On Thursday, Temple University student Rushil Vishwanathan, 19, started off the call with a musical performance that spanned generations: He sang “Imagine,” by John Lennon, and “Thinking Out Loud,” by Ed Sheeran.
Then, battling laggy video and shaky audio, the students and seniors watched a clip from a 2019 national debate tournament — a speech focused on the value of connection and appreciating differences and complexities.
Their ensuing conversation touched on everything from social media — “It makes people think more, and you see different opinions,” said Sunny View resident Eleanor Incerpi — to the Black Lives Matter protests to the strangeness of talking over Zoom in the first place.
“Look at how we can communicate,” Aseltine said. “You have to pay attention. We all have our own picture, we’re all the same size. You’re not impressing anybody. You can leave if you want to have a temper tantrum.”
Shrinandan, Sindhuja, Sahith and Sriya started Youth x Senior Buddies this spring, as nursing homes began closing down, shutting out visitors in an attempt to ward off the virus.
The four friends — whose parents had been friends since the kids were born — had always wanted to start an initiative to give back to their community, Sriya said. The pandemic gave them the opportunity to do so, sending Sriya, 19, home from Rice University and Sindhuja, 18, home from the University of Washington in March. High school for Sahith, 17, at Bellarmine College Prep and Shrinandan, 16, at Cupertino High School went online around the same time.
With the the time to pursue a new project, they drew on Sriya’s experience volunteering with Alzheimer’s patients at Rice, the Kudaravallis’ close relationships with their grandparents and the Narayanans’ wish for similar relationships in figuring out what to do.
“I’ve been really close with my grandparents ever since I was little,” Sriya said. “I grew up with them for a few years, and I had a strong bond with them. I would ask them to come to the US very frequently. I know some people don’t have that bond with their grandparents, and they’re not very close with them. That’s why we wanted to provide this forum where youth can connect with seniors and have this nurturing relationship with them.”
So far, they’ve only held a few conversations with Parkview and Sunny View residents. But they’re hoping to draw on their collegiate connections to grow their network of volunteers and eventually partner with care centers across the country.
At Parkview and Sunny View, they’ve already received a warm reaction.
“I appreciate you taking the time to see the life that we have here,” said Gennie Waters, one of the Sunny View residents on Thursday’s call. “You people are young, and this is the time that you really really have to look around. Communicate; don’t go into your rooms all the time. Call a friend.”
