LOS ANGELES: The smell of frying garlic and ginger is inescapable as it wafts through the room, while a row of fidgety kids watches an older woman in a blue plaid apron cooking in front of them.
“When I was growing up my mom used to make this a lot,” she says, showing a chicken stir fry recipe.
At this “Intergenerational Summer Camp” in a Southern California suburb, the grandmas are in charge. Every week, they taught a group of 8-to-14-year-olds how to cook a new dish and a do a handicraft such as sewing, embroidering, clay jewelry and card marking.
“Isolation and loneliness is something that seniors are challenged with, and they love having younger people around them,” said Zainab Hussain, a program manager at Olive Community Services, a nonprofit aimed at bringing older adults together that hosted the camp.
The camp was held at a community center in Fullerton, a city in Orange County that’s home to a large Arab population, and many of the campers and grandmas come from those communities. In between activities, the small room bustled with energy as the girls chatted and munched on snacks. Some of the volunteer grandmas milled around and watched, content to just be around the youngsters.
