Thewinding street lined with mailboxes and houses with manicured lawnslooks like many residential neighborhoods in the United States. ButHope Meadows is unique. The planned community has a special mission:to support families who adopt children who, Brenda Eheart says, mightotherwise never have families of their own: "sibling groups, olderchildren, children with a lot of emotional problems - those childrenwould probably remain in the revolving door of foster care if it werenot for this program."
Thefoster care system provides temporary homes for children who have beenorphaned or removed from their birth families. Brenda Krause Eheartdesigned Hope Meadows based on her research, which showed thatpermanent adoptions of these children - some of whom had been abused orneglected by their birth parents - often failed, and the children werereturned to foster care.
"Our children have been in at leastfour different homes before they come to Hope Meadows, and some havebeen in seven and twelve homes," Eheart notes.
Shebelieved that if families who adopted these children lived in acommunity together with specially trained counselors to assist them,the families would be better able to survive the challenges that facedthem.
In 1994, Eheart was offered housing at a formermilitary base to establish her planned community about 200 kilometerssouth of Chicago, in Rantoul, Illinois. But she was asked to fill morehouses than she planned to.
That'swhen she decided to bring retirees into the mix. Although it wasn'tpart of her original plan, Eheart says, "That idea of having theseniors there, giving them reduced rent in exchange for their providingservice and support to the community, has really been the one thingthat has made this community the success that it is. I do believe wewould have closed within three years without them."
Instead,Hope Meadows and the 12 families who live there are thriving. Thereare even plans underway to replicate the community elsewhere, thanks toa grant from the .
Eheartbelieves that within the next two years, other inter-generationalcommunities "will be popping up all over the U.S.," and some, she adds,will be addressing other social concerns.
She has alreadybegun work in other states with young mothers who have completed a drugtreatment program. "If they can go to a community where they can getaffordable housing, where they can have grandparents, where they canget support while they learn job skills, learn parenting skills, theycan have support through these relationships as well as theirchildren," Eheart explains.
Elsewhere in the U.S., shesays she is working with young mothers who have been in prison. She isalso considering programs to support young people who have beenconvicted of crimes themselves and are coming out of the juvenilejustice system.
Eheart, 64, grew up on a small dairy farmin the Midwestern U.S. She says values she learned from herhard-working parents, as much as her research into foster care, wereguiding forces that helped shape Hope Meadows.
"My parentscertainly did not have much money," she recalls, "but in troubled timesmy parents were always there, and my parents always sacrificed for thechildren."
Although her parents hadn't gone to college, shesays they made sure all the children did. "And when I see children ina situation where they don't have that kind of caring adult in theirlives, I almost have a visceral reaction to it."
The 50children who live in Hope Meadows - biological, adopted and foster -have not only supportive parents, but also a whole community lookingout for them, including approximately 60 seniors.
Eheartsays the children have become caring individuals in return, caring fortheir elderly neighbors: "stopping by to make sure they are okay,calling them to make sure they are okay, bringing in their paper sothey don't have to get up out of their chair, walking their dog forthem day and night, [doing] all kinds of everyday things that would bedifficult for the older adults."
Regardless of how old orhow young we may be, we all want to be needed, says Brenda Eheart. AtHope Meadows, everyone is. It is a community of caring individuals onall levels.
"In some ways this is such common sense, andin some ways it's the way we would like to think this country couldbe," Eheart says. With Brenda Eheart's guidance it isbecoming that way, one community at a time.
Her work was recentlyhonored once again, this time with a $250,000 private award from the.