Dandelion Village
Donation protected
Greetings, my excellent friends -- and thanks for being here! I appreciate your eyeballs.
Dandelion Village is not a place yet, but it's more than a dream. Determined people stand ready to actualize our vision of a group foster home and animal shelter where the kids care for the animals.
Our business plan explains it best:
"City shelters euthanize millions of adoptable animals every year due to lack of space. An indoor-outdoor shelter in a rural setting such as a farm can receive surplus animals from these shelters, saving their lives. By providing for the physical, mental and social needs of these animals, we can make their days joyful and interesting. By adopting them out, including facilitating easy adoptions by residents and interns, we can open up more spots for more animals.
"Children in the foster system suffer from a lack of stability, loving community and adult guidance that can cause permanent emotional harm. We target this problem through traditional talk therapy and an array of additional techniques and best practices. First, by integrating these children into a larger community, we hope to form organic familial bonds and nurture a feeling of being cared for and accepted. We encourage this with activities and events designed to spur interaction among age groups, e.g. by partnering up a child and an intern to train an animal, or games where children must partner up with elder adults to complete a challenge. Second, by exposing children and teens to a broad variety of roles and challenges, we allow them to safely explore their own strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, ultimately leading to lives of productivity, pro-social behavior, and self-actualization. Finally, urban kids and teens in particular are often completely out of touch with nature, and returning its presence to their lives has proven health benefits both physical and psychological. Growing one’s own food creates a sense of contentment, and caring for animals is extremely healing.
"Teens and young adults in the foster system are often left with little after the age of 18. They may struggle not only financially but with feelings of abandonment, confusion, and aimlessness. The internship program is designed specifically for these young people. It offers a stable job and living situation for as long as the intern needs (expected minimum one month), giving the intern a broad array of duties to choose from to help them determine their career goals. Many of these duties (childcare, farming, working with animals, and elderly care) have known uplifting psychological effects. Indeed, nearly all these fields have proven to lead to increased levels of professional and personal fulfilment.
"Elders can feel lonely and cut off from their communities at home, especially when they live alone, but resist retirement homes as places full of plastic plants where people 'wait to die'. This nonprofit is a radical alternative to that paradigm: a place where elders can live with nature and find new friendships and relationships, integrated into a multi-generational community – and, if they want, contribute to that community. At this retirement home, residents will have quite a few unusual opportunities: to work with animals ranging from kittens to cows, to garden, to cook, to build and repair, to consult, and many more. Most of all, they can spend time with children – teach them, babysit them, eat with them, or just sit and chat. These children, most from the foster system, will likely be thirsty for adult support and positive role models, and most would appreciate more encouragement and attention. Seniors can decide for themselves how much of their golden years will be spent relaxing, how much will be spent being productive in whatever manner they choose, and how much will be spent guiding and connecting with the next generation.
"Study after study tells us that much of what seniors, adults, children, and animals need is simply each other. Therefore, the approach taken at every level of this project is to rely on mutualism and symbiotic relationships, most fundamentally the relationship between children and domestic animals. It is guided by Permaculture, a sustainability methodology that focuses on drawing new connections to allow problems to “solve each other”. In this case, the connections are numerous. For example, the problem of children needing parental figures solves the problem of lifeless retirement homes, and the problem of struggling young people without jobs solves the problem of surplus animals in city shelters – and, of course, vice-versa.
"Perhaps the most exciting part of Dandelion Village is that it is self-sustaining. Unlike many similar entities, it does not have a for-profit arm unrelated to its mission – rather, the profit is generated as part of the mission, integrated into the very concept of the organization (this also means it is tax-exempt once Dandelion Village gains 501(c)3 status). This means Dandelion Village has the potential to be the first of a new nonprofit franchise, opening sister organizations in other locations around the US and perhaps the world."
Give us some money, and we'll get to rescuing!
Dandelion Village is not a place yet, but it's more than a dream. Determined people stand ready to actualize our vision of a group foster home and animal shelter where the kids care for the animals.
Our business plan explains it best:
"City shelters euthanize millions of adoptable animals every year due to lack of space. An indoor-outdoor shelter in a rural setting such as a farm can receive surplus animals from these shelters, saving their lives. By providing for the physical, mental and social needs of these animals, we can make their days joyful and interesting. By adopting them out, including facilitating easy adoptions by residents and interns, we can open up more spots for more animals.
"Children in the foster system suffer from a lack of stability, loving community and adult guidance that can cause permanent emotional harm. We target this problem through traditional talk therapy and an array of additional techniques and best practices. First, by integrating these children into a larger community, we hope to form organic familial bonds and nurture a feeling of being cared for and accepted. We encourage this with activities and events designed to spur interaction among age groups, e.g. by partnering up a child and an intern to train an animal, or games where children must partner up with elder adults to complete a challenge. Second, by exposing children and teens to a broad variety of roles and challenges, we allow them to safely explore their own strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, ultimately leading to lives of productivity, pro-social behavior, and self-actualization. Finally, urban kids and teens in particular are often completely out of touch with nature, and returning its presence to their lives has proven health benefits both physical and psychological. Growing one’s own food creates a sense of contentment, and caring for animals is extremely healing.
"Teens and young adults in the foster system are often left with little after the age of 18. They may struggle not only financially but with feelings of abandonment, confusion, and aimlessness. The internship program is designed specifically for these young people. It offers a stable job and living situation for as long as the intern needs (expected minimum one month), giving the intern a broad array of duties to choose from to help them determine their career goals. Many of these duties (childcare, farming, working with animals, and elderly care) have known uplifting psychological effects. Indeed, nearly all these fields have proven to lead to increased levels of professional and personal fulfilment.
"Elders can feel lonely and cut off from their communities at home, especially when they live alone, but resist retirement homes as places full of plastic plants where people 'wait to die'. This nonprofit is a radical alternative to that paradigm: a place where elders can live with nature and find new friendships and relationships, integrated into a multi-generational community – and, if they want, contribute to that community. At this retirement home, residents will have quite a few unusual opportunities: to work with animals ranging from kittens to cows, to garden, to cook, to build and repair, to consult, and many more. Most of all, they can spend time with children – teach them, babysit them, eat with them, or just sit and chat. These children, most from the foster system, will likely be thirsty for adult support and positive role models, and most would appreciate more encouragement and attention. Seniors can decide for themselves how much of their golden years will be spent relaxing, how much will be spent being productive in whatever manner they choose, and how much will be spent guiding and connecting with the next generation.
"Study after study tells us that much of what seniors, adults, children, and animals need is simply each other. Therefore, the approach taken at every level of this project is to rely on mutualism and symbiotic relationships, most fundamentally the relationship between children and domestic animals. It is guided by Permaculture, a sustainability methodology that focuses on drawing new connections to allow problems to “solve each other”. In this case, the connections are numerous. For example, the problem of children needing parental figures solves the problem of lifeless retirement homes, and the problem of struggling young people without jobs solves the problem of surplus animals in city shelters – and, of course, vice-versa.
"Perhaps the most exciting part of Dandelion Village is that it is self-sustaining. Unlike many similar entities, it does not have a for-profit arm unrelated to its mission – rather, the profit is generated as part of the mission, integrated into the very concept of the organization (this also means it is tax-exempt once Dandelion Village gains 501(c)3 status). This means Dandelion Village has the potential to be the first of a new nonprofit franchise, opening sister organizations in other locations around the US and perhaps the world."
Give us some money, and we'll get to rescuing!
Organizer
Claire Kaplan
Organizer
Cheltenham Township, PA