June 9, 2015, Portland Oregon:
The process of developing our River West Village (RWV) aging-in-place membership organization is proceeding steadily and we can foresee that a substantial amount of work remains to be done. In the past several months I have been advocating within our nascent Village and with Villages NW, our parent nonprofit, to consider developing the social and community aspects of the Village right now, rather than conceptualizing ‘community’ as a service to be provided, along with the help services that are envisioned (e.g., transportation and light home repair, etc.) when RWV ‘launches’ a year or two from now Several observations have prompted my emphasis on building community now rather than later: 1. A number of people have dropped out of the Planning Group, saying that its too much work. 2. I see how much work that I and others are doing to develop RWV – and the effort is equivalent to part-time jobs for many of us. 3. We were only doing a few occasional soup dinners that could be counted as social engagement with each other – the vast majority of our interactions with each other was around the work. 4. My belief that people would rather be welcomed into a RWV social community and then decide how they can contribute towards the work than being invited into a work party with the promise of services and ‘community’ at some future time [protestant work ethic?]. 5. Building an engaged River West community now will be a more effective way of attracting others in SW Portland to join us and belong to something they believe in, rather than being attracted to us by the ‘allure’ of helpful services to be provided in the future (that to some, only serve notice of their impending incapacitation). 6. Many existing Villages across the US have more ‘social’ members than members who receive help services. 7. Villages in the early stages of operations report problems with low enrollment and point to a problem called ‘not ready [for help services] yet’ as an important cause.
Our initial efforts in RWV to assess the kinds of social community that current members want have been very successful, suggesting that we are on the right path. We have already had one happy hour social that was well-attended, have established a regularly-scheduled guy’s coffee meeting, have fostered smaller group and individual meetings, and are planning more soup dinners, cultural event outings, and informal gatherings where we can get to know one another and form an engaged social community. More social, discussion, and cultural groups and outings are being planned. There is increasing enthusiasm and participation, which implies to me that folks are more attracted to us by community than the promise of future help.
I also believe that conversations within an engaged RWV social community is a far better basis for knowing what will be successful when the membership organization launches than assumptions based on the experience of other villages – but I will talk more about that in my next post. The impact of building RWV community so far has been an increase in the number of folks active in our community and who are volunteering to do the work of building the Village.
Here’s what I believe is the take away message: Building an engaged and enjoyable social community is a more fun and effective context within which to do the work of building a help services membership organization than offering several years of work that will be rewarded with the opportunity to buy into a menu of help services and social events.
John Dougherty, River West Village
Aging in Community 