Program at a Glance
Established in 2009, our storytelling group program is legally trademarked (Reg. No. 4,615,806) and its success and flexibility has been proven through its implementation at diverse pilot sites nationwide. Its research-backed outcomes have been published and presented internationally in professional journals and conferences. This award-winning program is endorsed by AARP’s national leadership to reduce older adult isolation and promote intergenerational engagement. Participants report that this program enriches intergenerational communication within 1-2 conversations, and produces visible signs of improved health and sense of purpose within 3-4 weeks.
Case Studies
See professional reports of on-the-ground impact
Sites
Costs
We understand that many sites have limited budgets, and encourage that you reach out to local businesses (such as banks, stores, restaurants, small or larger businesses looking for local publicity) or use local grants to sponsor this program – we would be more than happy to advise you on local outreach. Don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss funding options. For very low-income communities that need our programming, we are especially interested in helping you get the funding you need.
To kick off your first year: your site – and one other site of your choice – can obtain our trademarked Toolbox materials, including guides and forms tailored to your needs, as part of our Story Cure Training Program. This includes a full-year license for you to start this program and run it at both sites. For more information, visit our Story Cure page to learn about the 2-month Strength Training Series: Basic Group Starter Curriculum.
For each subsequent year, it costs $400 to renew your storytelling group program license per site – before the annual cycle begins. We offer a 10% discount if your network is renewing licenses for 8 or more sites at a time. At any time during the year, a licensed site can request a refresher course at a $250/hr (per site) rate with a 1.5hr minimum. Additional sites can attend the course at $125 (per site). We can also work with you to design your own full-day, full-weekend, or 3-weekend booster curriculum for a network of sites, at a discounted rate proportionate to the time and resources needed. Events are added on as an optional additional element – find out more here.
We also recommend hosting a Story Pop-Up program every half a year or every year to deepen your impact on your participants and broaden your impact to the greater local community. For more information, visit our Story Pop-Up Events page and we will work will you to put together an unforgettable event. The amount of planning time varies depending on event size – please contact us early so we can have time to enjoy the collaborative planning process with you!
What is Included
Training as described on our Story Cure page, as well as complete access for 1 year to The Best Day of My Life So Far’s Toolkit, which is filled with all the tools and instructions you need to launch a life-changing intergenerational storytelling group using The Best Day of My Life So Far’s trademarked name and methods, and to track your group’s progress. After you follow the Toolbox instructions to register your group, you can begin using our name and implement our program during the one-year period. In addition to the program package, the Site Supervisor can request additional services, such as private and semi-private consultation sessions with Best Day’s Founder or Program Manager, and is invited to special networking events.
Who Can Apply
Organizations with a solid track record in providing services and programs to older adults are eligible to host this program. Either a member of the organization’s leadership or a leadership-selected staff person applies representing your organization. The selected staff person will also serve as the Site Supervisor and is responsible for setting up and ensuring the quality of our program at your venue. Individuals who are not staff at an eligible organization but hope to get involved need to connect with an organization first to become a volunteer, then have a staff person apply Accepted organizations are called “Partner Sites”.
Timing
The program is structured around 8-week modules. We encourage sites to continue run its group(s) for as many modules as possible, because every module is another chance to draw in more participants and grow the sense of family, and deepen the transformation in the lives you have already touched.
Participants
The participants of this program are defined as the older adults and younger volunteers and visitors participating in the storytelling group, once a group has been set up by your organization. Our storytelling group model is an inclusive community model; everyone is invited to attend and diversity in every form is encouraged. The program must be offered free of charge by your organization to stay true to this inclusive approach.
Number of Lives Changed
On average, a new group will start with 4-10 older adult participants and 3-5 volunteers (ideally younger people in the community such as students from a nearby high school or college, or professionals living or working nearby) recruited by supervised by 1-2 venue staff members (“program supervisor, assistant program supervisor”) chosen by the venue manager. The group will grow in size steadily – when a group is run properly, participants will naturally invite more peers to join!
A typical group should turn 20-30 intergenerational strangers or acquaintances into a close-knit family by week 8, and bring a closer-knit group even closer with each subsequent module. Annually, a group can repeat for 5 modules every year and still fit in 2-week breaks in between.
Mathematically speaking, 20-30 lives can be transformed 5 times or 100-150 lives can be transformed once each. Realistically speaking, participants in subsequent modules are a mixture of repeat and new participants, so a group is simultaneously making deep impact on 1-module participants and significantly deeper impact on 2-or-more module participants.
A current goal of our organization is to review records of ongoing groups to understand these numbers with more precision. We are working to calculate a typical group vs. an outstanding group’s average “deep” impact count and “very deep” impact count per year, to set stronger quality control standards for new groups. The key measure of success of our storytelling group program is DEPTH OF TRANSFORMATION, which spans 6 areas, or what we call our 6 metrics: social engagement, technological engagement, intergenerational engagement, cognitive activity, reminiscence activity, emotional expression.
Besides our weekly storytelling groups, which are habit-forming, we have a Story Pop-Up program and a Story-Cure program, which you can learn more about here. The key measure of success of these programs is SCALE, or the number of intergenerational community members we can reach in a compact amount of time. A current goal of our organization is to set some templates of number of people reached based on event types, to set stronger quality control standards for event planning and partnerships with the right hosting venues.