The beauty of an intergenerational friendship is infinite. SAGE Table brings older and younger members of the LGBT community together to talk about our commonalities. We go through the same things, we have a shared history, and we have a shared future.

Last year there were 232 SAGE Tables across 40 states with more than 3,000 participants. With support from NYC’s Mayor Bill de Blasio, Ellen Degeneres, and Whoopi Goldberg, our first year of SAGE Table was a major success. Now it’s time to create more connections at SAGE Table 2018. Sign up to host or attend a SAGE Table in your area, and join our Facebook Group to stay up to date.

Posting live on May 18, 2017, Whoopi Goldberg introduced her Facebook fans to SAGE Table.

“We’re here because we’re doing a SAGE Table,” she said at the start of her live post. “I don’t know if you know about SAGE, but SAGE is an organization that’s trying to put together older gay folks, younger gay folks, so we can figure out how to get through this world together.”

While celebrity shout-outs can mean the world for a big event, for SAGE, Whoopi’s support meant even more. “We purposely enlisted the help of celebrities for our inaugural SAGE Table campaign last May because we wanted this SAGE Table experience to be more than a flash in the pan,” said Sterling Herr, SAGE’s Chief Engagement Officer. “We wanted it to be the start of an intergenerational movement in the LGBT community. Celebrity endorsements helped to give SAGE Table its legs.”

Along with Whoopi Goldberg, other celebrities joined in to promote SAGE Table in 2017, including Zachary Quinto, Sia, Judith Light, Janet Mock, Lance Bass, Chaz Bono, Jane Lynch, Sarah Paulson, Holland Taylor, Dominique Jackson—all-stars who have a history of standing up for the LGBT community. They joined in for our YouTube promotional spot called, “Come to the Table.”

Rallying around the #SAGETable hashtag, Twitter shout-outs last year came from Sia, Sandra Bernhard and Bevy Smith, and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Ellen DeGeneres chimed in via Facebook. On Instagram, celebs felt the #SAGETable love, too. New York diva Miss Peppermint, the current star of Broadway’s Head Over Heels and the first runner-up on Season 9 of Rupaul’s Drag Race, was spotted at a SAGE Table. So was designer Kenneth Cole.

When the stars align, others often speak up—and that’s just what we were counting on! You don’t have to be a celebrity to host or attend a SAGE Table (or promote it on social media). The purpose of SAGE Table is really about creating an intergenerational social network for LGBT people, especially older adults.

Whoopi Goldberg says: “We want to make sure that people understand that we have to take care of our elders. We just have to do it. Because if we don’t do it, no one’s going to do it.”

That’s why we’re all about using our social networks to help get people offline IRL (in real life). We know that we need a movement to end isolation and that we need each other—getting together to talk, share food and ideas, and just get to know each other better. It’s what our community is built on.

Sign up to host or attend a SAGE Table event this year.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Diverse Elders Coalition.