As regular readers of Prime may have noticed, one of the themes that runs through many of our feature stories is how one person - or organization - can make a difference.
This month’s feature on the Stir Up Some Love fundraiser for Easthampton’s Treehouse Foundation - the innovative, multi-generational village approach to foster care - offers a glimpse of both.
If you’re not familiar with Treehouse, you’ll get to meet Judy Cockerton, a former teacher and toy store owner who, in 1999 at the age of 48, became a foster parent.
But Cockerton didn’t stop there. Stunned by the statistic that 25,000 young people ‘age out” of foster care annually in America, often with the prospect of homelessness, poverty and drug use as their only future, she set out to reimagine what foster care could look like. In 2006, with the help of partners Beacon Communities and Berkshire Families and Children, she opened the multi-generational Treehouse community in Easthampton, focused on providing loving care for foster and adopted foster children.
Like any nonprofit, Treehouse is constantly fundraising, something the coronavirus pandemic upended, as it has for so many organizations. But Treehouse isn’t just any nonprofit, and its development committee was adept at thinking out of the box. Nevertheless, Treehouse Director of Strategic Planning and Development Julie Kumble shared that the group just “sort-of-arrived” at the cooking lesson fundraiser idea, inspired in part, she said, by the annual event hosted by chef Unmi Abkin, co - owner of Easthampton’s Cocoa and the Cellar Bar & Grill.
Designed, Kumble said, to “raise all boats” by supporting both Treehouse and the 15 chefs and restaurants who are participating in Season One of the “Stir Up Some Love,” online video cooking lessons, it’s an inspired concept well worth a look.
Please, please, wear your mask
I want to share a cautionary tale that illustrates just how important mask wearing is. Last month our 20-year-old son, who lives with us and works as a gymnastics coach part-time while attending a local college, got the call no one wants - there had been a possible COVID-19 exposure at his workplace. Immediately we began thinking about all the people we had recently been in contact with - my mother, his aunt, cousins he had visited to deliver a toy, his girlfriend and her family - all who now might have inadvertently been infected were he - or we all - COVID-19 positive. Thankfully, we all tested negative, and I firmly believe his consistant mask-wearing at work was a factor in his - and our - protection.
Wear your mask. Stay safe. And as always, thanks for reading.
Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
