Intergenerational Meeting in Arucas Old Town

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👵🏼👴🏽💚 Today, on the International Day of Older Persons, we want to highlight something we sometimes forget: **everything we can still learn when we sit down to listen.** Listening to a story. A recipe. A memory from the neighborhood. A childhood game. A different way of doing things. Because our elders don’t just keep memories: **they keep a part of who we are.** And that’s what this project is about: not losing that connection between generations. Today, in La Goleta, 25 older people from the Day Care Center spent the morning with 65 girls and boys from CEIP La Goleta. Nearly 90 people talking, playing, laughing and learning together. ❤️ Since May, Soy Mamut has been coordinating this Intergenerational Project of the Department of Citizen Participation of the Arucas City Council. We have already held four gatherings in Cardones, Santidad, Arucas and La Goleta, with nearly 100 people at each event among older adults, children, young people and families. Because connecting generations is not just about bringing together people of different ages. It’s about giving reasons to talk, ask questions, teach, listen and share. We have experienced it by making pella de gofio and mojo —each grandmother has almost her own recipe, like Doña María and her pella with sweet potato—; playing dominoes, jumping rope or learning how to spin a top; getting closer to clay and Canarian pintaderas; talking about our neighborhoods; sharing hot chocolate with churros and laughs with La Escupidera. But, above all, we have shared time. When we listen to our elders, we discover a part of our own history. And when older people, girls, boys and young people share a space, everyone has something to teach and something to learn. We are, in part, the continuation of those who came before. 💚 That’s why today we want to stand up for something simple: let’s not stop asking them questions, listening to them and sharing with them. Because when an older person tells their story and a young person listens, a part of our community stays alive. And this goes on: there will be new activities and in December we will hold another gathering in the historic center of Arucas. We continue connecting generations, neighborhood by neighborhood. 💚