Conference Catch-Up

Good morning! Donna asked me to catch you all up on activity here at the GU Conference. My name is Vicki Bolton, and I'm GU's Public Policy Manager. Yesterday, Generations United stormed Capitol Hill to educate our legislators and ask them to support intergenerational programs, policies and families. As you can see from the photo, Donna got in a little calisthenics during our advocacy forum!

More than 70 conference attendees toured the Capitol building (and some of us even got to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she welcomed new Congressional Pages to the building). Then we headed over to the Rayburn House Office Building for a crash course in advocacy and legislation. I had some worries that between the Capitol Building, three House office buildings and three Senate office buildings, we would lose some of our valuable advocates... I'm pretty sure everyone got safely home (although with over 400 conference attendees it can be a little difficult to tell...) but I know that we had at least one Hill Day casualty. One passionate advocate (who shall remain nameless) ripped his shirt in an 0ver-enthusiastic gesticulation disaster!

We had some really good reports back from meetings with Representatives and Senators. It sounds as though we will have some new co-sponsors for the Kinship Caregiver Support Act, as well as some great support for multigenerational opportunites under the Older Americans Act too.

Anyway - more later...!