Help Wanted: Grandparent Ambassadors

At Discovery Museum, our philosophy is to support kids, their curiosity, and their learning—and to support the parents and caregivers who play such a critical role in their early development. We know that parents sometimes can arrive at Discovery Museum carrying stress and can feel overwhelmed. With all that parents need to juggle these days, we wanted to find additional ways to help them enjoy their visit.

The idea for Grandparent Ambassadors came from the book, The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution by Dixon Chibanda. The book shares the story of a village in Zimbabwe that implemented a community-based mental health program that trained volunteer grandparents to offer empathic presence, including talk therapy, to adults who were suffering depression and anxiety. The sessions take place on “Friendship Benches,” special park benches intended to foster intergenerational connectedness.

Though we don’t have Friendship Benches, we took the basics of the idea and piloted our Grandparent Ambassador program last year. We found that the presence of a grandparent—a friendly face, a listening ear, a helping hand—can be a wonderful way to support parents during their visit. Several local grandparents volunteered for the pilot, making themselves available to parents in our Brain Building Together gallery, our dedicated space for children ages 0 to 3 and their caregivers. 

We’ve seen that parents want meaningful experiences with their children and also would like to make—and could benefit from—other connections as well. Grandparents can be a calm, kind, and caring presence, supporting caregivers in ways that can help them de-stress and enjoy their special time at the Museum with their child. 

And so, we are recruiting a team of Grandparent Ambassadors to join us this spring—if you are a grandparent, please consider joining us! To learn more about this opportunity or apply, please click here.