I am so excited to share our big news with you! With rockets bursting in air, we are celebrating progress with our expansion project! On June 12th the Madison Planning Commission unanimously recommended our project to the Madison Common Council and on June 20th, the Madison Common Council unanimously approved our zoning and conditional use permits. We are moving forward!
The next step keeps Hope & A Future in a genuine position of interdependence with the community. From the beginning everyone working on this project knew it would take a diverse community of talent and resources to make the first TIIN a reality. This point of interdependence has been especially driven home to me recently by, what I prefer to call, a sports injury to my wrist. Back in early March I was hiking in the woods with walking sticks and their straps placed around my wrists. I took a very confident step onto some oak leaves that turned out to be covering a big smooth patch of ice. My feet flew forward and I landed on my back with one walking stick firmly planted in snow and ice and my wrist caught and yanked in the strap. The bone fracture healed–nicely but the soft tissue damage left some floating bones. This happened to my dominant hand. So I have had increased interdependence needs ever since! I had a surgical procedure last week. And we are not done yet. Thank goodness, I live in a household where helping each other is our mode of operation. While I do not enjoy needing help, I am grateful it is there. Together we have figured out new ways to get all of the work done at Hope & A Future. Likewise, while we are thrilled to move forward with our expansion, the next steps require more help from the community. Our $10 million project requires a $4 million dollar capital campaign. Some of that money was already raised for pre planning. We are happy to report that in spite of unexpected twists and turns we remain up to date on all costs. And we have more than enough land at our current site for our planned expansion. It will be sustainable, replicable and beautiful!
We are reaching out to the greater community again as we embark on the capital campaign that will complete our Therapeutic Interactive Intergenerational Neighborhood or TIIN model. Together we will continue to look at old and new ways to share life and combat loneliness while building the equity needed to allow all generations to flourish. I have always maintained that like plants, people are either growing or dying. If the environment is right, growth continues to our end. If the environment is not right, growth can be easily stilted even at early stages. At Hope & A Future we regularly see the synergy between the needs and strengths of young and old and we are harnessing its power! We look forward to the next steps of growth. These steps include fundraising, meeting the people interested in living here, continued partnership with the UW, building the spaces we need to live well together and best of all expanding our courageous intergenerational family of friends!
If you are interested in learning more, please join us at our July 16th Views and Pies event. You can also contact us at [email protected] or call 608-831-0243.
In the meantime, I hope you can celebrate summer with family and friends and make a few new friends in the process!
My best to you,
Karin