The Experience Corps (EC) represents a new model of senior service, designed to create new, generative and productive roles for older adults to address unmet needs of public elementary schools, and to provide a social model for health promotion among older adults, aimed at improving their social/psychological, cognitive, and physical functioning. In conjunction with a proposed 5-year randomized trial of the EC, with older adults randomized to participate in the EC or other volunteer opportunities, the primary goals of Project 4 are to, first, test for hypothesized greater """"""""gains"""""""" in social and psychological functioning among older adults randomized to the intervention [EC] arm;and second, test whether hypothesized benefits in social and psychological functioning mediate hypothesized benefits of EC participation for cognitive and physical functioning and health status. Expected social and psychological gains for EC participants derive explicitly from core features of the EC program which include placing trained teams of volunteers in schools (providing a critical mass of volunteers and promoting a sense of collective """"""""team"""""""" efficacy), having them fulfill meaningful roles to meet school needs, requiring a commitment of 15hours/week and providing an incentive reimbursement to offset volunteer expenses (e.g., transportation, meals). As a result of these program features, we expect that participation in the EC will result in gains with respect to important aspects of both social and psychological functioning among the older adults, including greater social engagement and development of new relationships, increased feelings of usefulness and worth, greater sense of generativity, self-efficacy and self-esteem. We expect that gains in these domains of psychosocial functioning will in turn confer benefits for cognitive and physical functioning in older adult volunteers. A secondary goal of Project 4 is to test the impact of the EC program on the broader school community. Specifically, we will test that hypothesis that presence of the EC teams in elementary schools results in development of more positive attitudes toward aging and of older adults capabilities among other adults in the school community (e.g., teachers, staff).
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