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Earth's Elders |
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Bettie is 114 years old. Her parents were slaves and she herself toiled long hours in the fields for her sharecropping family. Her life story has mirrored our national one, filled with joy and sacrifice, triumphs and tragedy. She has lived an incredible life. For some they might look at her and see just another “old lady”. But to many she is now an “Earth Elder”, whose wisdom has been captured in print for eternity and whose picture has hung in the United Nations. Most importantly her story is now being shared with students around the country to create a new way of teaching history and connecting generations.
Our treatment of the elderly, unfortunately often leads a lot to be desired. It is too easy to dismiss them as something less than what they are. The Earth’s Elders Foundation was created to capture the images and life stories of many of the world’s oldest people with the hope that we may appreciate the lives of our own elders, their experiences and their wisdom more fully.
What started our as a single man on a mission, founder Jerry Friedman, is now involving into a spirited collaborative of non-profits, corporations, government and respected citizens such as Harvard’s Robert Coles and former Surgeon General Joyce Elders, to raise the profile of issues concerning the treatment of our national treasures. Furthermore, through a partnership with the Columbia University’s Bank Street College, a curriculum has been created and is now being implemented to help create connections to a new generation.
Our goal is to create one million connections between our elders and the young in 2008. To date, over fifty thousand copies of the book have been sold and an exhibit in the U.S. Congress is scheduled during the spring. During this time we will begin a push for a national agenda on improving the treatment of our elders, appreciating the wonder of their lives and extolling the benefits of teaching the next generation about the personal history of previous ones.
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© 2007 YELLOWBRICKROAD Communications
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