Mentoring and Learning with the Claremont Colleges
At Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California, one of the community's most defining features is who lives next door. Our 32-acre campus sits adjacent to the Claremont Colleges consortium: five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools within walking distance. That geography created a partnership that has evolved over years into an intergenerational relationship residents describe as one of the most meaningful parts of life here.
For adults evaluating retirement communities, an intergenerational connection is one of the quieter but most consequential factors. A community whose residents interact regularly with younger generations tends to feel more alive, more curious, and more connected to the world than a community walled off from other age groups. Pilgrim Place is built around that connection.
This piece is for anyone considering independent living in Claremont, California, or for adult children helping a parent evaluate whether a retirement community will support continued engagement with younger generations. We will walk through what our intergenerational partnership with the Claremont Colleges actually looks like, how the Napier Initiative operates, why relationships between residents and students often grow into something closer to family, and what a genuinely intergenerational retirement community offers residents that a more insular community cannot.
What Is the Intergenerational Partnership at Pilgrim Place?
Pilgrim Place's intergenerational partnership with the Claremont Colleges extends the opportunity for residents to become mentors to younger generations and to learn alongside them. The most structured expression of the partnership is the Napier Initiative, a program that pairs Pilgrim Place residents with Claremont Colleges students on projects focused on justice, peace, and care for the earth.
Beyond the Napier Initiative, residents attend college lectures, cultural events, performances, and open programs at the colleges. Students visit Pilgrim Place for programs, meals, and community events. The relationship between the two communities has become woven into the daily rhythm of both.
For prospective residents, the practical result is that daily life at Pilgrim Place includes regular access to and interaction with a rich academic and cultural community that most retirement communities cannot offer.
How the Napier Initiative Works
The Napier Initiative is a partnership between Pilgrim Place and the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges that supports intergenerational mentoring and student-led work focused on justice, peace, and care for the earth. Residents apply the decades of professional experience they bring to Pilgrim Place, including careers in ministry, education, social work, public policy, environmental advocacy, and international development, to the specific projects students are developing.
The pairing is structured so that residents and students both benefit. Students receive mentorship from someone who has spent a career working on the kinds of issues they are studying. Residents contribute their expertise to work that will continue after them, and stay engaged with the questions that shaped their own careers.
The work is real. Students develop projects with community impact. Residents advise on strategy, context, historical lessons, and practical implementation. What starts as a mentoring relationship often continues beyond the formal program timeline.
Why Relationships Between Residents and Students Grow Into Family
What starts as mentoring often grows into something closer to family. Residents attend graduations. They are invited to weddings and baptisms. Over time, students begin to feel like adopted grandchildren, and residents become the mentors, friends, and extended family a young person carries with them long after leaving Claremont.
That deepening of the relationship is what distinguishes a genuinely intergenerational retirement community from a community that occasionally hosts students for photo opportunities. The Napier Initiative is designed as a structure for real relationships to form. The years that follow are when those relationships become part of the fabric of both a resident's and a student's ongoing life.
For residents, that continuing connection to younger generations is a significant part of what keeps daily life feeling engaged rather than insular. Neither side is just observing the other.
Learning Goes Both Ways
The exchange between residents and students is genuinely two-way. Students share the perspective of their generation, including new tools, technologies, cultural references, and ways of thinking about the issues they are working on. Residents share professional knowledge, historical perspective, and the kind of judgment that only decades of work in a field can produce.
That exchange keeps residents woven into how the world is changing right now, rather than observing it from a distance. For adults choosing a retirement community, that connection to the present moment is one of the most protective factors against the isolation that can otherwise develop in retirement.
How the Intergenerational Partnership Fits Into Life at Pilgrim Place
The intergenerational partnership is one of several defining features of daily life at Pilgrim Place. It sits alongside Andiron, where residents share life stories with their neighbors monthly. It sits alongside our Current Affairs Forum, where residents engage with issues shaping the moment. It sits alongside our interfaith services, meditative practices, resident governance, and the many other resident-led programs that shape the community.
Together, these programs create a community that is genuinely connected to the wider world, both intellectually and generationally. For prospective residents evaluating continuing care retirement communities in California, that connection is one of the clearest reasons Pilgrim Place appears on so many short lists for adults seeking a community where later life continues to matter.
The Bigger Picture: A Retirement Community That Is Part of a Larger Whole
Pilgrim Place was founded in 1915 in Claremont, alongside the growing Claremont Colleges. That geographic and community connection has evolved over more than a century into the partnership that now defines much of daily life for our residents. The intergenerational partnership is not an add-on. It is one of the foundational reasons Pilgrim Place has always been in Claremont.
For adult children evaluating retirement communities for a parent who has always valued continued engagement with younger generations, the intergenerational partnership is one of the clearest signals that Pilgrim Place is a community where that engagement will continue.
Final Thoughts
If you are researching independent living in Claremont, California, or considering university-adjacent retirement community options across the state, the intergenerational partnership at Pilgrim Place is one of the most distinctive parts of what the community offers. Not just proximity to a college campus, but a structured partnership that has been building real relationships between residents and students for years.
Come tour Pilgrim Place. Ask about the Napier Initiative. Meet residents who are currently mentoring students, or residents whose former mentees are still in touch. What you learn will tell you a great deal about what an intergenerational retirement community actually looks like in practice.
Schedule a Visit to Pilgrim Place
The best way to understand the intergenerational partnership at Pilgrim Place is to spend time here. Tour the campus, meet residents, and see how the connection with the Claremont Colleges shapes daily life. Schedule a visit or speak with a member of our team to learn more about Independent Living at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California.
FAQ
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The intergenerational partnership at Pilgrim Place is the ongoing relationship between residents and students at the five Claremont Colleges. The most structured expression of the partnership is the Napier Initiative, a program that pairs Pilgrim Place residents with students on projects focused on justice, peace, and environmental sustainability.
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The Napier Initiative is a partnership between Pilgrim Place and the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges that supports intergenerational mentoring and student-led work on justice, peace, and care for the earth. Residents mentor students, and both sides benefit from the exchange.
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Pilgrim Place's 32-acre campus sits directly adjacent to the Claremont Colleges consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools. The colleges are within walking distance of the Pilgrim Place campus.
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Yes. Residents attend college lectures, cultural events, performances, and open programs at the Claremont Colleges. Students visit Pilgrim Place for programs, meals, and community events. The two communities have become woven into each other's daily rhythms.
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Relationships that begin through the Napier Initiative often continue beyond the formal program. Residents attend student graduations, weddings, and family celebrations. Over time, mentoring relationships often become something closer to family.
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Pilgrim Place is a values-driven continuing care retirement community in Claremont, California, located on a 32-acre campus at 625 Mayflower Road. Independent Living inquiries can reach the community at (909) 768-7698.
