Starting September 1, 2022 the Coming of Age program will now be called engAGE Travis County.

To better understand our name change, here is the history of our program and where we’re headed next. 

• In 1972, Travis County applied for a federal Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) grant.  RSVP was established locally that same year with Travis County as the local sponsor of this federal program.  Travis County has remained the sponsor of the RSVP grant for Travis County ever since.

• In 1993, per the federal government, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program changed its name to “The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program” to reflect the new reality that not all older volunteers were retired. At this time, the age requirement to join RSVP was lowered from 60 to 55 years.

• In 2010, we changed our name from RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program) to Coming of Age to expand our scope of services, while still retaining the RSVP grant.  In other words, RSVP exists as one of Coming of Age’s programs.  The name change to Coming of Age was based on an initiative from Temple University to provide services to people 50+ (baby boomers) who were entering their second half of life with a new vision and approach to aging.  This allowed us to go beyond what we did with RSVP by providing leadership development to volunteers and Travis County older adults, training to corporations and their employees on exploring their futures and productive aging, training to nonprofits on how to effectively utilize older adults to help the organizations achieve their missions services, and establishing intergenerational volunteer programs across the age spectrum.  Six years ago, Temple University relinquished the Coming of Age national office and negotiated its transfer to Presbyterian Senior Services New York City. 

• Now we’re moving forward with a new name, engAGE, to make a break from the national initiative, to design our own programs that support productive aging with a focus on volunteerism, to better reflect what we are about – engaging older adults in volunteer services, as well as to make it easier to explain what the program is about.  The use of lower case and upper case letters highlights our focus on aging.  The word “engage” focuses on our purpose of engaging older adults in volunteer services. 

As always, thank you for your continued support and dedication to volunteerism and making a difference in your community.