WHAT is a Village?

 A Village is a group of neighbors who join together to:

• Build community
• Support seniors in the neighborhood
• Enjoy each other

It can be a simple as a neighborhood phone tree. 

It can be as grand as having regular neighborhood potlucks, taking trips in the Villages bus and more.

It’s your village, and you can make it your own.

WHY create or join a Village?

• to help your neighbors… and be able to ask for help when you need it.
• to connect, make friends, and support each other.

The Biggest Why: So that everyone who wants to can live in their own home for as long as they wish to, as independently as possible.

No one needs to grow old alone. Instead, let’s grow older together.

Contact Villages Program Manager Maria Glanz at villages@vashoncenter.org or (206) 929-0823 to enroll. Read on for more info!

HOW does the Vashon Senior Center help your Village?

• The Villages Program Manager is your concierge and helper: Maria can help you with signing up and gathering your neighbors, with technology and access, with organizing events and trips … whatever your village needs.
• The villages van & driver: Villages can use the brand-new 10 passenger van to take field trips. Grandparents and grandkids can go to the zoo or Northwest Trek, a group can see a play or go to a museum… whatever you imagine!
• A dedicated email routed through the Senior Center (such as townvillage@vashoncenter.org) - so that neighborhood leaders can communicate with members easily.
• A neighborhood iPad: to help village leaders sign up or orient new members, help someone access the Helpful Village website, email all the members with neighborhood news.
• This Helpful Village website: a way to stay in touch with each other and a way for people who need help to ask for it easily. 

In a nutshell: The Senior Center provides the Villages Program Manager and all administrative support: funding, liability insurance, background checks for Village Volunteers, technology and software, and everything listed above!

Ready to Enroll? Click here!

A Brief History and Thanks: The Village to Village movement began 20 years ago in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. Now there are Villages across the United States. To learn more, visit: vtvnetwork.org. Thanks to a grant from the King County Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy, the Vashon Senior Center is able to help neighborhoods on Vashon-Maury create their own Villages. So we can all grow older together.

Funding for this program is provided by