A year after she was hired to help implement senior villages in Rockville, City of Rockville Villages Facilitator Trish Evans told the Mayor and Council in a December update that four organizations are emerging, with two more potentially forming before the end of 2018.
Villages are grassroots, volunteer-led, neighbor-support networks created to provide assistance to seniors, enabling them to continue living in their own homes. Villages are self-governing organizations, each unique to the community it serves. In 2010, the U.S. had 35 recognized operational villages. By 2016, that number had risen to 160, many in the D.C.-metro area.
Villages are in formation in Rockville’s West End, East Rockville, Twinbrook and King Farm. Additionally, a nonprofit umbrella organization dedicated to the development and support of villages was formed recently — Rockville Area Villages Exchange, Inc.
Evans said she is hard at work supporting the villages movement throughout Rockville. “Anything they can ask, I will seek it out and I will try and find it,” Evans told the Mayor and Council. “That goes for all the villages and is the message I’ve been trying to get out around the city.”
For more information, contact City of Rockville Village Facilitator Trish Evans at 240-314-8807 or [email protected], or visit www.rockvillemd.gov/villages.