Generations Connect
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About

Generations Connect started in New York in 2023. Volunteers run it, so that LGBTQ+ New Yorkers a generation or two apart get to know each other.

Neighbors of every age lean over a row of park benches with brushes, painting them on a sunny corner of Broadway.
Painting the benches on West 76th Street, 1973

Who runs it

Rêvasser pays for it Out of its own pocket.
Volunteers run it Mentors and coordinators give their time.
It’s free, always There’s nothing to buy, and the brand never uses your name, your face or your words.
Why a clothing brand

Rêvasser makes clothes in New York, and Generations Connect is how it gives back to the city. The program has its own name and its own pages, and nothing on them is for sale.

How to help

Apply as a mentor or a mentee, or tell someone who should. Right now that helps more than anything.

So far

  1. 2023

    We started in New York and matched the first pairs.

  2. 2024

    The first pairs reached six months. Most of them kept meeting.

  3. 2025

    Pairs are meeting once or twice a month, in all five boroughs.

In good company

We learn from these independent programs, and every one is worth knowing about.

SAGE, New York, since 1979

Its Friendly Visitor Program, the first of its kind in the country, sends a trained volunteer to an LGBTQ+ elder once a week. sageserves.org

DOROT, New York, fifty years

Visits, programs by phone, and programs that bring younger and older New Yorkers together. dorotusa.org

Openhouse, San Francisco

Lunches across the generations and groups led by elders, made with LGBTQ+ elders rather than for them. openhousesf.org

Los Angeles LGBT Center

An intergenerational Thanksgiving each year for its LGBTQ+ young people and seniors. lalgbtcenter.org

Opening Doors, London, 2016 to 2024

Befriending by trained volunteers, groups for its members over 50, and Pride in Care, a quality standard for health and social care. We borrow from what it built. openingdoors.lgbt

Other places to go in New York: Hetrick-Martin Institute · Ali Forney Center · The Trevor Project · The LGBT Community Center · Out in Tech. Several have done this work for decades.

“Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.”

James Baldwin · Nothing Personal · 1964

51 and 53 Christopher Street in 1928: two low brick buildings behind an iron fence, a car parked in front.
1928Percy Loomis Sperr, public domain
The same two buildings in 2010, the Stonewall Inn, with window boxes along the upper floor.
2010Gryffindor, CC BY-SA 3.0

51 and 53 Christopher Street in 1928, and the same buildings as the Stonewall Inn, where the uprising of June 1969 began.

Apply

We’re pairing people now, all over the city. The form takes about ten minutes, and a coordinator writes back within two weeks.

Become a mentor Find a mentor
[email protected] Run and paid for by Rêvasser, a New York clothing brand.