Chicago Documenters explored how intergenerational relationships shape how people live, work, organize and build community as part of a collaboration with the Civic Reporting Fellowship.

By Grace Del Vecchio, Alina Panek, Mare Ralph, Caroline Williams, Ethan Mathews, Jackie Thomas, Pachina Fletcher and Zoe Alden Greenfield

City Bureau Documenters and Civic Reporting fellows discuss intergenerational relationships during a Community of Practice session at its Bronzeville office Oct. 1, 2025. (Mustafa Hussain/for City Bureau)

Social isolation and loneliness have become “widespread” throughout the world, according to a World Health Organization report from June. The trend carries “serious but under-recognized impacts on health, well-being and society,” the report states.

The report also notes that the remedy for this goes beyond social connection — raising awareness and changing national policies to strengthen social infrastructure and intergenerational engagement is key. Those efforts can help preserve personal histories and build relationships that, in turn, strengthen communities and connections.

For our intersecting work between Documenters and the Civic Reporting Fellowship, we asked Chicago Documenters to explore how intergenerational relationships already shape how people live, work, organize and build community. We also wanted to learn more about how shifts in the economy and instability in the world are making people rethink how those relationships work.

For the first time, Documenters interviewed each other. Participants were split into three different generations, and we paired each participant with another Documenter from a different generation.

Participants included residents from all sides of Chicago and ranged from 23 to 77 years old.

Here are excerpts from those interviews. – Grace Del Vecchio

Interviews have been edited and condensed.

What is an issue happening in your neighborhood that is dividing people across generations or bringing those folks together? Can you explain what is going on?

Angela Ybarra, 56, has been living in Hermosa for eight years. She shares an intergenerational household, caring for her Gen Z son and his children. A cancer survivor who has also endured four brain bleeds since 2012, Ybarra speaks with striking perspective about the political impacts of gentrification in her neighborhood. While older generations were displaced, younger generations are trying to respond differently.

In Hermosa, there are a lot of people who lived in Logan Square and Avondale who were kind of pushed out from those neighborhoods because of gentrification. The younger generations say, “We're standing our ground and we're not losing our identities, and we can be true to our ethnicities and true to the American way of life.”

A lot of sense of community is coming together. People are realizing they need to know their neighbor. You need to count on schools and community events like block parties and neighbor clean-ups.

I’ve been in my area for eight years. In that timeframe, I've been able to see a marked difference — before, it was very closed off, and then obviously the pandemic made it worse. And now, all of a sudden, people are understanding the need to know your neighbors, and communicate with each other and say hello, and help each other out. I've had neighbors leave care packages when I wasn't well because they knew that.

What opinions do people across generations share about an issue in your neighborhood, and how do their perspectives differ? How does the media portray these similarities and differences?

Janetta Pegues, 63, is an adult librarian who lives in Greater Grand Crossing. A baby boomer, Pegues was shaped by the awareness of injustice she gained as a child in the 1960s. Pegues lived in the Chicago Housing Authority’s ABLA Homes until she was 21. She is passionate about service to others, guided by her Christian faith and civic involvement, which brought her to the Documenters program. Despite political divisions, Pegues is encouraged by the way in which people have come together, across generations and race, to support recently arrived migrants in her neighborhood.

Under the former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the governor of Texas bused several thousands of migrants to the city of Chicago. Our current mayor inherited this. In South Shore and Greater Grand Crossing, people began to come together and collect clothing and food and bring them to the shelters and help people learn the language.

I’m a member of New Life Covenant Church Southeast, and we’re on 76th and Greenwood. We're largely a Black church, but we have another whole Spanish section of members that attend our church, and one of the members went to the shelters and bused the migrants into our church. Out of that, we have birthed another Spanish-speaking church.

I think the media always takes the negative story, and they harp on that. You will find plenty of stories about pushback against people, saying, “They shouldn't be coming to this country. They're illegal.” First of all, nobody is illegal. You know, no one is irrelevant. If you're born, God saw fit for you. He has a plan for your life, and so that's very problematic.

We have a migrant family on my block, and so I made sure that I took them all of the information that the Johnson administration was putting out in Spanish about what to do if an ICE agent tries to arrest you.

I'm a born-again Christian. I don't wear my Christianity on my sleeve … but I believe in following the word of God as best I can, and it says, “When I was in prison, you visited me. When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was naked, you gave me clothes.” Jesus said, “When you did this to the least of them, you did it for me.”

What’s something you’ve learned from someone of another generation?

Brooke Greene, 47, is Gen Xer whose perspective reflects the independence often associated with her generation, shaped in part by growing up as a “latchkey kid” in New York City. Raised by a single mother, Greene recalls how the freedom to explore came with long stretches of time on her own and a lack of neighborhood connection. That balance of autonomy and isolation, she says, still shapes how her generation is often perceived, and makes it difficult to ask for help or lean on others.

With the younger generations, I’ve definitely learned all about boundaries and consent and accepting yourself, and all this really cool stuff that we did not have in the ’90s. I absolutely love that for you guys. Especially having a teenage daughter, I have learned so much about speaking up for yourself and being really clear-cut. She's a badass. I really do love the consent culture and body positivity, seeing ads on TV with people of different shapes and sizes after I grew up mostly seeing celebrities like Kate Moss.

Kara Sage, 31, is an Auburn-Gresham resident who enjoys crocheting. She is from the north suburbs and has lived in Chicago for eight years. She successfully cultivates strong relationships with older generations, from her parents, grandmother, to her yarn teacher. Through crocheting, she learns from older generations and lives a creative life that brings her happiness.

I'm thinking of this yarn shop and how many different types of people and generations come in. It is largely an older generation, in the 50-and-up range. When we have conversations, we are more alike than different. We're more connected than we think. Something I've learned from that generation, from seeing them come in, crochet and knit, is that there are things in life that we can't control. You know, we have to go to work. We have to pay attention to what's going on in the world, and we have to be a part of this society, even though we didn't all ask to be here. But one thing we can control is doing things that we love.

There was a point in my life where I was just going, working like 9 to 5, and actually it was like an 8 to 5, every day, going to work, coming home, eating dinner, working out, going to bed. It felt like I didn't have purpose, and I didn't have movement.

When I decided to leave my job and be more creative and see other spaces where people are creative, I'm seeing that a lot of these women, their happiness comes from being able to do the things that they love — being able to knit, being able to crochet, being able to have community and just chat. I think that happiness and joy can be a lot more simple than it felt for a long time.

Do you have strong relationships with people of a different generation?

Susan Carlotta Ellis, 63, is a mover and a shaker. She’s a South Shore native and self-described “mutli-dimensional creator of the arts,” who dips into architecture, journalism and storytelling. She is a woman of initiative, candor and respect. Ellis spoke to the value of the relationships she has with younger generations, while also working to appreciate the experience she brings to these relationships.

I work with a lot of younger people, people that are anywhere from their 20s, 30s, 40s. I probably work with more younger people than I do people my age, because most people my age are retired.

But I enjoy those relationships because they are very caring relationships, and they look to me for wisdom and guidance, and then also I look to them for that as well, because they are still the future. And if we don't understand either side, the future won't work well.

Sometimes I ageism myself, and I have to watch that, because I feel I'm still worthy. I feel I'm still able to operate and give to society. I feel like having these youthful relationships kind of keeps me youthful, as well, and keeps me in tune with what is actually going on in a rounded world.

If more spaces of intergenerational interaction existed, would you frequent them? Why or Why not?

Mohammed Taha Syed, 28, is originally from the Bay Area in California, but has moved around during his young life. He moved to Chicago in March 2022 from New York City for a position at NBC News. He now lives in Wicker Park and is working to find ways to get involved with intergenerational spaces like the ones he felt connected to in Brooklyn.

Yeah absolutely. I love the opportunity to connect with people who aren't the same as me. I feel like there aren't enough spaces where that happens. Perhaps I haven't put enough energy into seeking them out because I feel busy a lot, but I would definitely frequent them.

When I was in New York, I used to volunteer at a church food bank. That was a space where most folks I met were of a different generation, like ages 40 to 70. They really came to rely on me during that time because it was during the COVID pandemic, and the food bank was getting slammed. A mentor I connected deeply to at that time, his name was Brother Joe, he used to run the food bank. We got pretty close, we would just talk about all sorts of things. At that time, I didn't have a lot of Black elders in my life … It was very rewarding and meaningful to me to just be at this church in Flatbush. Being Muslim, obviously I wasn't too familiar with the church dynamics before that. I had to move from Brooklyn to Chicago for a job, and it was very tough for me to make that decision. That experience was very formative.

What’s something you’ve taught someone of another generation?

Sheila Lewis, 50s, moved to Chicago from the New York metro area 15 years ago and lived in neighborhoods across the city before settling in the South Shore. Sheila is a member of Generation X deeply engaged in her local neighborhood and several artistic communities, including the House music scene.

To not let age stop them. I have a girlfriend who is 70, and we've been friends for 25 years. We used to work part-time at some call center, way back in the day. And back then, I thought she was so adventurous: she had an Alpha Romeo drop-top car. I’ve known her since she lived with her boyfriend, and then they got married, and then they had kids, and now the kids are grown, and she got divorced after 30 years of being married. So I feel like I've known her all my life, but over the years, somehow she became more reserved. I think I teach her all the time that age doesn't prevent me from doing things. It doesn't have to stop you.

I'm a commuter. I gave up my car during the pandemic. She'll be like, “Oh, at this age, what am I doing getting on a bus at night,” and I'm like, “Be glad for mass transit.” My God, thank you — nothing can stop me. Public transit that runs at night means you can hear live music, for free, at Pritzker Pavilion. So I think I teach boomers and older generations daily to be free.

Grace Del Vecchio is City Bureau's editorial manager for Documenters, forging connections between the Chicago program’s work to document public meetings and pathways to sharing that information with communities. Prior to her start at City Bureau in 2023, she was a freelance reporter and producer covering health, housing, policing and movements and participated in City Bureau's Chicago Documenters and Civic Reporting Fellowship programs.

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Generation to Generation: Documenters Dialogue Connects Chicagoans Across Age Brackets