About five years ago, longtime friends Neice Schafer and Patsy Etter knew they wanted to give back to the community. Their children were grown and out of the house. Both had recently retired – Etter from the counseling profession and Schafer from volleyball and soccer coaching.

They brainstormed ideas. Help unwed mothers? Work with foster kids? Nothing seemed the right fit. Then one night they saw a “60 Minutes” segment on Eugene Lang who promised some Harlem sixth-graders that he would pay their college tuition if they stayed in school. His work evolved into the I Have a Dream Foundation, which replicates the program nationwide.

Eureka! Schafer and Etter discovered their project. They would “adopt” a second-grade class and commit to the students through their college years. They would help them in after-school programs, tutoring, mentoring and eventually, with college money. More than a decade’s worth of commitment.

The project soon became an all-consuming calling. Their husbands, Paul Schafer and Frank Etter, were in, too, along with another couple – Angie and Irv Zakheim. These three couples are the sponsors, but try to shine a light on them and they deflect it. They explain that early on friends and acquaintances donated money and promises of volunteer time for a project in the planning stages only. They approached business people they knew for seed money, and the idea germinated throughout Spokane. They sing the praises of their collaborators: Boys & Girls Club of Spokane and Spokane Public Schools.

But Schafer and Etter knew what a fragile dream they possessed. If either of them blinked, it was over. Neither blinked.

Wednesday evening, they unfolded their project to the parents of the second-graders at Lidgerwood Elementary School on Spokane’s North Side. The parents looked stunned.

In the second half of our lives, to become fully adult, we must nurture the generations who will inherit the community we leave behind, and not just our own children and grandchildren. As people see their nests emptying, their jobs ending in retirement, and their routines changing, they face new choices on how to spend their time and money.

The sponsors, volunteers and donors behind Reach for the Future have chosen to make a commitment to children they do not yet know very well, thereby providing an example to all of us.

Poet and songwriter Tuli Kupferberg once wrote: “When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.”

At a press conference Thursday at Lidgerwood, the 50 second-graders wore bright yellow T-shirts and black graduation caps. Before they filed back to their classrooms, they clapped, shouted and tossed those caps into the air – into their emerging, new world.