For the first time in Israel, a revolutionary project that could change the lives of thousands of children and elderly people – a preschool inside an assisted living facility for senior citizens – was set up and documented in a television series. The first episode will be broadcast on the Israel Broadcast Channel, Kan 11, on October 27 at 9:15 p.m. and on the station’s website.
The program, 80 and 4, is based on the successful British documentary series, which will also be broadcast here on Kan 11.
In the 80 and 4 experiment, 80-year-olds (and some even older) and four-year-olds attended a special preschool in which they participated in the same activities for six weeks in Bayit Bakfar in Bitan Aharon. Extensive research has demonstrated the benefit of intergenerational integration. Many kibbutzim in Israel have some less-extensive version of this project, in which children join older residents in art and holiday activities. But this is the first time that young children and senior citizens have been part of such a completely integrated daily routine.
Several Israeli experts provide commentary for the documentary on the project, including Dr. Yoram Maravi, senior physician in the Department of Rehabilitation Geriatrics at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Prof. Anat Mirelman, from the Division of Neurology at Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv, part of Sourasky Medical Center, who is the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Early Signs of Neurodegenerative Diseases and a lecturer in Tel Aviv University Medical School; and Dr. Eric Tayib, educational-social psychologist, child specialist, and head of the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Sapir College.