Ishan Mandani loves his grandparents.
In 2008, he and his mother created a program, Grandkids, to give others the opportunity to share the experiences of intergenerational conversations with others. He ran the program at Palm Harbor University High School in Palm Harbor, Florida.
Now, he’s the vice president of the UF chapter of Grandkids. The club will have its first meeting of the semester today at 6:30 p.m. at the Computer Science and Engineering building as an official UF club. Clubs must operate one year before they are official.
The club hopes to start getting funding from Student Government to get better speakers and do a charitable event this semester.
“This program is a life-transforming experience,” the 19-year-old UF business sophomore said. “It may help you with your career, but it will also help you gain perspective in the future.”
Mandani said he recruited members from his high school. One of his friends from high school, Chase Mallory, decided to implement the program on campus last Spring.
“When we got to college last year, we realized we could utilize campus and Shands,” the club’s president said.
Student volunteers in the organization gain clinical skills, such as conversing with others, from visiting with patients and special experiences from bonding with older individuals, the UF health sciences sophomore said.
Mallory, 20, said he remembers visiting a polio patient named Willie this semester at Shands. After three hours together, he listened to Willie talk about his struggle of being paralyzed from the neck down because of polio, which he has had since he was 17.
“He told me you always have to stay positive no matter what restrictions life puts on you,” Mallory said.
All the organization’s members go through formal training before they participate in the clinical work, he said.
“A really interesting aspect is that not a lot of people can just go into an assisted living facilities or hospital settings and form connections with strangers,” Mallory said.
He said he expects this organization will help college students create bonds with older members of the community.
“College students become over involved in what they are doing and develop tunnel vision,” Mallory said. “You get to step back and talk to these people and learn life experiences.”
Mandani said he doesn’t want the generation to be isolated. He wants UF students to learn from elders and the wisdom they have.
“We considered them family and they treated us like family,” Mandani said.
Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MerylKornfield.
