As I look back now to 2007, when Shirley Haberfeld and I starting exploring the then-new village model, I can only think: “We were so naïve”.
It began with the 2007 New York Times article about Beacon Hill, the first village in the country. As it turns out, that article inspired many groups across the country to try to replicate Beacon Hill’s model, but we didn’t know that then. My husband Peter sent the article to our neighbors. Silence. Then I bumped into neighbor and friend Shirley Haberfeld. Shirley was exploring the county’s aging services, thinking about having her mother move here. But people didn’t return calls, or they left her on hold or they just didn’t have any suggestions. She was frustrated. We started talking about the Times article. Shirley cheerfully said, “We should start one here.” Yes, naïve.
We never dreamed of an organization serving much of the East Bay – we were thinking neighborhood. We invited a few women from the neighborhood to meet to discuss how our parents aged and how we wanted to age. Everyone agreed that they wanted to remain right here in our Elmwood/Bateman neighborhood. Simple. Shirley and I began exploring how we could build a village in our neighborhood.
Supporters and Life Savers
We called Beacon Hill Village for guidance. Turns out, they had assembled a detailed how-to manual based on their own experiences. We bought a copy, and each of us took a chapter to read. We researched demographics and so many other details we’d never considered in our earliest daydreams. Shirley and I took the lead, even though we both had full-time jobs.
We consulted people we respected from our other community involvements: Marty Lynch (longtime director of Lifelong Medical Care), Avi Rose (executive director at Jewish Family & Community Services and currently Ashby Village’s interim executive director) and Andy Scharlach (gerontology specialist and professor of social welfare at U.C. Berkeley). They became our brain trust -- supporters, cheerleaders and life savers.
The early villages were named for the neighborhoods where they originated, and we too were neighbors acting collectively. Ashby Avenue was the major artery through our neighborhood, so we decided to call ourselves Ashby Village.
Then Ted Roszak happened. At the time, Ted, a North Berkeley resident, professor at what was then called Hayward State and the author of The Making of a Counter-Culture, was researching a new book entitled The Making of an Elder Culture. He was captivated by the village model, and Beacon Hill Village gave him our names as local people who were in the process of forming a village. Ted was also an older Berkeley resident with a personal stake. He told Shirley, “You’ve got to come to North Berkeley. You need to be in the whole community.” He convinced us that not only was there wider interest but that we would need a larger scale to be financially sustainable.
Moving Forward in Fits and Starts
Word spread. We met in living rooms, community centers, and on street corners. What would the village look like? How would it be supported? We’d need an office. Would we need a full-time staff? How large? Do we charge a fee? The answer to the last question was yes, and that fee hasn’t been raised in 12 years, a feat no other village in the country has accomplished.
I was on the board of LifeLong Medical Care, and they agreed to become our fiscal sponsor.
We needed to build a strong volunteer base, but how would they be trained and supported? We moved forward in fits and starts. We got organized. We hired a temporary executive director, Janice Brewer, to guide us through the initial steps, including establishing an office and searching for a permanent executive director.
Ashby Village launched July 1, 2010, with 80 members and Andy Gaines at the helm as executive director. The, pre-existing neighborhood groups took an interest. Betty Webster and a number of friends from Kensington signed on, and Betty became a years-long mainstay on our board. Next, early volunteer Tobey Klein “brokered” a large group from Emeryville. We were growing. It was happening. We’d all started a village.
Building a New Model
Volunteers started with small tasks like grocery shopping. I’m overwhelmed when I look at what evolved from those early volunteer efforts. The volunteers and staff today give much-needed assistance in ways we never contemplated in our early explorations. All of our members and staff brought their own ideas and energy and helped to build a new model based on our members’ determination to age safely in their own communities. We continue today to add and refine services and community activities as we move beyond solely personal assistance into alliances with other organizations and issues of aging policy for the larger community.
Irene Marcos developed the volunteer and activities program. We hired a consultant to come in for three months to design a volunteer program. Pat Carvallo, our operations manager for a decade, built that training into a model now used in villages across the country. We established the MedPal program where trained volunteers go to doctor appointments with members and take notes.
I don’t think it would have happened in any other community. We have an amazing collection of people in our East Bay area — people filled with ideas and passions who want to live their lives with dignity and purpose and help others to as well. We shaped the nucleus, and they took it from there into a future we could not possibly have imagined.
Ashby Village has made it possible for me at the age of 84 to wake up in the morning and to be excited, to feel there’s still a lot of living to be done — a lot to learn and a lot to give. What do I value the most? The people I would never have met without Ashby Village. They’ve become treasured friends.
There is so much more to come. Ashby Village is going to become a real player in the larger aging community. Based on what we’ve accomplished, I know anything is possible. We have already had an impact at the national and state level.
As a co-founder of Ashby Village, Patricia has brought years of experience as a healthcare executive and board member of community organizations to her work in building our village. A former hospice director, she was also Chief Operating Officer for LifeLong Medical Care, gaining practical experience as well as an understanding of the public policy issues around aging. Pat serves on the Finance, Nominating, and Planning Committees of the Ashby Village Board.