Celebrating our Seniors
Have you ever wanted to learn more about your family history? For the past year and a half, I have been working with the Hillsborough Senior Center on my Girl Scout Gold Award project, “Celebrating our Seniors”. While conducting research on Ancestry.com, I came across some shocking statistics. 83% of 18-34 year olds are interested in their family histories, but half of Americans only know the name of 1 or none of their great grandparents. Additionally, 78% of Americans say that they want to know more about their family history, but 27% do not even know where their families lived before they came to America. This problem stood out to me because it appeared that so many people wanted to learn more about their backgrounds, but they either did nothing about it, or were not doing so effectively. Given my interest in history and documentaries, I chose this issue of many people not knowing enough about their family as the basis for my Girl Scout Gold Award Project.
Over the the past year and a half, I conducted video interviews with 22 seniors at the Hillsborough Senior Center. I asked a wide array of questions, from questions as basic as, “what was your childhood like?” to deeper questions such as, “what was a major turning point in your life and how has it impacted you today?” or “who has had the biggest influence on your life and why?” Throughout this process, I met many wonderful people and had the privilege of hearing the stories of their lives, each unique and special in their own way.
After conducting the interviews, I compiled the highlights into a video presented to the Senior Center titled “Celebrating our Seniors”, and hosted a premiere party for everyone to watch themselves on the big screen and learn about their peers. In addition, I edited the individual interview videos into a keepsake DVD which was presented to the family of each participant. This not only gave family members insight to their relatives’ past, but will also spark deeper conversation in the future. Lastly, I compiled a brief summary of each senior’s story into two scrapbooks. The first is at the senior center so that new members can learn more about their peers. The second scrapbook is at the Hillsborough Public Library, so that members of the town can learn more about some of the people that have lived here the longest.
According to post-interview surveys I administered, 92% of interviewees agreed that watching their interviews with their families will encourage them to share stories from their past and 82% agreed that it would help preserve their family history.
While completing my project, I picked up some useful tips that I’d like to pass along to those wanting to learn more about their own family history. For example, I learned that some questions and interview methods yield better results than others. For instance, 55% of interviewees agreed that the question, “tell me about your childhood” was the most effective with sparking future conversation with their families because of the endless possibilities of follow up questions that can arise. 33% of seniors agreed that the question, “what was the biggest turning point in your life?” was helpful with creating future conversation as well. An additional piece of advice is to not only ask questions to learn about your family’s past, but to use their answers and pieces of advice in the future. Each and every family has a rich history behind it, which if tapped into, can be very interesting and useful if practically applied in our lives. The last piece of advice is a skill that comes with practice. In each interview, try your best to have a fluid conversation. If you enter the interview with a set of questions and a specific order that they should be asked in, it turns into more of an interrogation than a conversation, and in this way, valuable pieces of information or conversation can be overlooked or lost.
For those interested in learning more about my project, a copy of the scrapbook “Celebrating our Seniors” is available at the Hillsborough Library in the “Adult Nonfiction New Jersey Reference Collection”!
