LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Another VIEW |
by Peter Rosenstein |
Generational Diversity
During a recent weekend in Rehoboth I chatted with a good lesbian friend who is a leader in both GLBT organizations and other community charities. She spoke about not seeing enough young people involved in the leadership of the organizations she is involved with and wondered how those of our generation can transfer our knowledge to the next generation when we communicate so differently. That conversation made me think about this issue. I asked a number of other friends about it and realized it could be a serious problem for the future existence of many of our most prominent organizations. I began my career when the exciting new communication tool was the IBM Selectric typewriter. Wow! I could make corrections without retyping my work from scratch. I think if you ask a young person today about carbon paper they think it has something to do with global warming. Now I admit I have come a long way from that time but I am still more comfortable having a conversation rather than texting, and a face to face meeting rather than a conference call. I believe the nuances of what we say are clearer when we talk rather than text or email. But the fact is that the next generation will communicate the way they do, not the way I do, and I need to accommodate that. How we bring the generations together and transfer knowledge and ideas is an issue we have to address. One way is to make sure that we are working together and bringing young people into leadership roles early in their careers. We need to incorporate the Facebook generation into the leadership of our organizations now. We talk of diversity with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, and religion but rarely talk about it in terms of age. One way to ensure that our GLBT organizations continue to flourish in the future is to make sure that all Boards, Advisory Boards and other leadership venues have specific slots assigned for people under 30. That may mean understanding that the Board of an organization like Food and Friends in DC, where the Board's role is to raise money, will open some slots for people who don't now have money or access to it but may in the future. It means that training of Board members may have to change to accommodate the young person's way of communicating. The trade-off is that the young person will be able to advise the Board on how to reach the community that they are a part of and make the organization relevant to them. I recently spoke to the Vice-President of GLAA. He is as concerned as others about who will take his role when he is ready to retire. Who will have the interest in the details of legislation and the analytical skills that he and some of the other older generation in the organization have. This has to be a concern of NGLTF, HRC and charities like Food and Friends as well. We do have young staffers in many of these organizations but the Boards are often only representative of the older generation. Jon Hoadley, the ED of National Stonewall Democrats, is a great example of a young dedicated activist. He and I first met as adversaries at a meeting but by taking the time later to meet and talk I found I really admire his abilities and his work and hope he felt that I also still have something to contribute. I think we need to find the young activists like Jon and work to bring them together with the older activists like myself and learn to communicate with each other. I want to be able to share some of the wisdom I hopefully have gained at the same time that I must be willing to begin to cede the mantel of leadership to the younger generation. In a recent column, I wrote about the lost clout of the Stein Club and GLAA. That column wasn't meant to say that these groups aren't important or still needed. What it did say was that they haven't been able to make themselves relevant to the younger generation in our community. There are thousands of young GLBT people in DC and in communities across the nation who are comfortable in who they are and living good lives. How do we get those young people to become activists or volunteers for organizations that will serve them and their peers in the future? How do we learn to communicate in the way in which they are comfortable? This is a challenge to all of us, young and old. I don't have the answer but we need to find the way to communicate with each other for all our futures. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 18, No. 10 July 25, 2008 |