Most senior cohousing communities value giving back to the larger community in which they live. This can take various forms, from volunteer work to donations of cash, goods or food. The holidays often prompt an extra burst of community involvement.

Shepherd Village in West Virginia is one such community. They published the following article in their August 2024 newsletter.

Residents of Shepherd Village, along with volunteers from the Shepherdstown Sangha (also known as Buddha Buddies) have been providing a hot meal one day a month for county residents who are unsheltered or food insecure. This program used to be sponsored by Jefferson County Community Ministries (JCCM), which coordinated the meals provided by many of its member churches. A couple years ago, JCCM shifted focus from short-term emergency assistance to individualized case management services, to help clients focus on finding permanent housing and getting the skills needed to find and keep better-paying jobs.
 
When JCCM stepped back, Kazuko (Kaz) Feldstein, who was active in one of the participating churches, volunteered to coordinate the meal ministries of the various participating churches in the county, as well as the churches where meals are distributed. Around the same time, the program transitioned to carry-out meals because of the pandemic.
 
During the pandemic, some of the smaller churches were not able to continue providing meals, and Kaz began looking for others to replace them. Bonnie, a former renter in Shepherd Village and a JCCM volunteer, asked some of us if we would work with her to provide a meal on the fourth Thursday of every month. Several Villagers responded that they would help — and encouraged us to reserve the Common House kitchen to prepare and pack meals. The Meals Team even donated money from the Common Meal Fund to support our first meal, for more than 50 people, in February 2023. Our Shepherd Village group is one of the few not affiliated with a church.

Since then [February], Shepherd Village residents and members of Buddha Buddies have regularly provided both financial and food donations. More than a dozen volunteers sign up each month to cook and serve the carryout meals at a church in nearby Charles Town. Every month, we serve between 60 and 75 people of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicities. Most come from the Charles Town area, and we are seeing a steady increase in numbers served. Meals are usually hot, such as casseroles or pasta with meat sauce, but submarine sandwiches also are a popular item. We also provide fruit, water and desserts with each meal. This is one of the wonderful ways that our community at Shepherd Village is giving back to our greater community in Jefferson County.

This past Thanksgiving, the community went above and beyond by providing a Thanksgiving dinner for neighbors who were unsheltered or food insecure. There were even beautiful pies for dessert, per an article in the Village Voice, the community’s newsletter. 

Shepherd’s Village Thanksgiving assembly line.

Cherry Hill Cohousing helps supply food pantry

At Cherry Hill Cohousing in Amherst MA, neighbors participate in a food collection program for the town’s local food pantry. Called The Neighborhood Food Project, it is coordinated by the eldest Cherry Hill member. She teams up with three pre-teens to drive around in her golf cart and collect her neighbors’ “orange bags” of nonperishable food and personal care items for the Amherst Survival Center’s food pantry.

The idea is to place donations in a special orange bag, supplied by the center. The bags are picked up every other month, on the third Saturday of even months, by the neighborhood coordinator and her young team. The project began in 2018 and is modeled after a similar program in Ashland OR. Find details at https://amherstsurvival.org/nfp/.

Some community members also volunteer every week at the center, organizing food for pickup by center clients, preparing meals, and staffing the community store.

Oakcreek cohousing helps clients shop for food

Members of Oakcreek Cohousing Community volunteer as a group one day a month at Our Daily Bread, a food pantry in Stillwater OK. They accompany clients through the aisles to help them choose the correct number of items for their family size, and to help load the food into vehicles. A few other members volunteer on multiple days each week, assisting in the stockroom and restocking the shelves on the shopping floor.

Oakcreek also participates in a group activity to help improve the local environment. A community team takes part in regular cleanup days to remove trash along the Kameoka Trail, a walking and biking path in Stillwater.

PDX Commons finds multiple ways to give

A haul of Christmas gifts for clients of a local charity. The charity requested that the gifts be unwrapped.

PDX Commons in Portland OR hasn’t yet undertaken a project as large as that of Shepherd Village, but the community has found various ways to give since its opening in 2017. Examples include:

• Working with a local refugee agency to provide household items for newly arriving refugees.
• Buying Christmas presents for residents at a local facility for people with developmental, intellectual or mental health challenges.
• Making monthly donations of non-perishable food and household items to a local church that distributes them to various food pantries.

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