After visiting a nursing home, he began pairing older Americans and newcomers

Rey Castuciano recognized the talents and wisdom of nursing home residents. He founded Table Wisdom to bring together that population and newcomers for weekly mentoring and conversational English.

|
Courtesy of Rey Castuciano
Rey Castuciano (c.) poses with Cindy Vantine and Zhe ‘Ian’ Wang, who were paired for mentoring via Table Wisdom.

This essay is part of an occasional series provided by our partner organization Encore.org, which created the Generation to Generation (Gen2Gen) campaign, inviting those in midlife and beyond to connect with kids who need champions.

Rey Castuciano didn’t plan to become his father’s primary caregiver, but when Mr. Castuciano spent six weeks in a nursing home with him after he had a stroke, it led to an aha! moment that changed Castuciano’s life for the better.

“I befriended a lot of the nursing home residents,” Castuciano says. “I got to know them and noticed how many talents and how much wisdom they had. But there was also a lot of depression and social isolation.”

During one of his stops in the nursing home’s cafe, he watched a video about seniors in the United States helping Brazilian students improve their English through Skype sessions.

That’s when his idea was born. He saw a way to benefit two populations, older Americans and newcomers, at once. And in 2014, he founded Table Wisdom, whose mission is to bring together mature adults and younger people born abroad (i.e., recent immigrants and international students) for weekly mentoring and conversational English via video chat.

Castuciano, who emigrated from the Philippines when he was a teenager, knew how important learning English was to his later success. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles and then furthering his education at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, he pursued a career in biotech. But when his father was discharged from the nursing home, he decided not to go back to biotech and to instead develop his Table Wisdom idea while also being a caregiver.

“Being a caregiver wasn’t something I was prepared to do,” he notes. “It was kind of just presented to me, and I had to figure it out. It can be very exhausting and stressful, balancing caregiving with being the founder of a social enterprise. But at the same time, it’s fulfilling and rewarding work.”

And Castuciano says he’s consistently gotten subtle messages that he’s on the right path. He relates a recent conversation with Zhe “Ian” Wang, an international student. “He told me his anxiety to move to a new country decreased after being paired with Cindy [Vantine], the mentor he began having video chats with before arriving to study at Washington University’s Brown School of social work. They’ve continued their mentoring relationship and now periodically meet for food or touring the city with Ian’s friends.” Castuciano adds, “That kind of success story feels really good, to know we’re making a difference in both of their lives.”

To date, Table Wisdom has made more than 90 matches. The international students currently come from Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis University, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, but a California school is interested in placing students beginning this fall. The mature adults come from a mixture of independent living sites, LinkedIn, and VolunteerMatch. To match people, common interests and personality type are taken into consideration.

Most connect by whatever video software they prefer (for example, FaceTime or WeChat). For the older adults who struggle with technology or don’t have a reliable internet connection, conversations can take place by phone.

These days, Castuciano is planning to help his parents reunite with family members in southern California, since his father is now doing well. He says, “Taking care of older people is embedded in our culture.”

For more, visit table-wisdom.org. Table Wisdom was a finalist in the 2017 Encore Prize, celebrating innovators who tap the talent of adults age 50 or older to help young people thrive. To learn more and apply for the prize, visit iamgen2gen.org/encoreprize.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to After visiting a nursing home, he began pairing older Americans and newcomers
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2018/0413/After-visiting-a-nursing-home-he-began-pairing-older-Americans-and-newcomers
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe