Hope Meadows. Why Can’t the Whole World Be Like This?

Rantoul, ILLINOIS.  Okay. This blog is about being on the road and telling you what I’m hearing as I work with people in different communities to help them start a Coming of Age initiative. 

I confess.  I didn’t really go to Rantoul, which is in rural Illinois.

I heard about Hope Meadows, a community there, when I was in Las Vegas (Now, that counts as being on the road, no?) at the recent American Society on Aging/National Council on Aging Annual Conference. 

But I was so moved by what I heard that I wanted to tell you about it.

In Hope Meadows, all the residents live in former military housing.  Most of the kids, predominantly African-American, have been in the juvenile justice system or foster care.  Many of the parents, fairly evenly split between black and white, are young mothers with young children who have faced hardships or couples who are foster parents and want to adopt.

And adopt they do.  Sometimes as many as six of the kids.

A Race-Blind Community

From what I heard and saw about Hope Meadows, it looks like these adoptive parents are race-blind.  A child’s need for love, warmth, tenderness, a home, and to have someone guide him or her, are all that matters.

Wait, it gets better. 

The seniors (That’s not a term I use often, but it’s what they call the older people who move into the community—so when in Rantoul…) come to Hope Meadows after applying to do so and passing background checks.  They move into modest accommodations at a low rent, and commit to doing 24 hours a week of volunteer work—though most do much more.

And they love the children.

How could they not?  They see these formerly troubled and/or abandoned kids beginning to thrive in their new environment. 

They’re with them hours and hours every day as the school crossing guards, enjoying community celebrations, mentoring or tutoring the kids, and become so much more than surrogate grandparents.  They become grandparents in the most generous, nurturing, human and substantive way possible.

Talk about a win-win-win.  The benefits seem endless: children’s lives are righted; parents who want to care for a family create and build those families; older people who want to be generative and who get so much back from doing so, do just that.

Community as intervention

I’m not one for what I call “non-profitese”—words like infrastructure and service delivery and replication models.  But the folks here have a term that seems perfect.  They say what they’re about isn’t “intervention in the community”; it's “community as intervention.”

It’s the community’s being and working together that makes all this happen.  It would appear that a village can do much more than raise a child.  It can make strangers into family and bond generations— deep-sixing racism and ageism in the mix!

Hope Meadows was established in 1994 with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Aren’t you glad you ate your “Wheaties” now that you hear with what they’ve done with some of the money they made?). 

It was the brainchild of Brenda Eheart, whose nonprofit, Generations of Hope, developed the concept. 

Word has it that Eheart  was the one who huffed and puffed and blew down the Pentagon’s reluctance to turn over this former military housing to serve this loving, progressive purpose (Talk about turning weapons into ploughshares!).

In 2006, the Generations of Hope folks formed a new organization, a holding corporation, again with support from Kellogg, and this time added Southshore Bank to the mix to provide low-interest loans to help get other communities like Hope Meadows established in other parts of the country.

Other people’s children?

These other communities will benefit from Hope Meadows’ 14 years of experience.  For example, they will be encouraged to build housing that makes sure that people’s front porches face each other and allows neighbors to keep watch not only on their own children when they’re playing but other children as well.

Though in places like Hope Meadows “other people’s children” doesn’t seem an apt phrase, does it?

How does this “intentional community” idea strike you?  The idea of “community as intervention?” 

Maybe more importantly, how does hearing about Hope Meadows make you feel?  And could you see applying some of the principles exemplified there in your community?

And if you’d like to know more about Hope Meadows of the Generations of Hope Development Corporation, just click those hyperlinks above.