View the recorded webinar

PowerPoint Presentations:

Village to Village Nework

At Home Downeast

CommunityCare of Lyme – Making a Village a “Village”

Monadnock at Home

According to the Village to Village Network there are more than 150 operating villages with an additional 120 in development, and each of these villages is unique. These grass-roots organizations are driven by their members and are based on the needs of their local communities. Maine and New Hampshire are proud to have joined this movement and are working hard to support and establish villages in their states. We’re pleased to have representatives from three local villages present during this webinar:

• At Home Downeast, Kara Janes
  At Home Downeast is a non-profit, member-based, volunteer supported program designed to provide residents of the nine-town Peninsula community Surry, Blue Hill, Brooklin, Deer Isle, Stonington, Sedgwick, Brooksville, Penobscot, and Castine with essential services, empowering them to continue to live safely in their homes as they age.
• Monadnock at Home, Rick Harnden
  Monadnock at Home’s mission is to provide the support, practical means, and community that permits members to stay independent in their own homes as long as possible. There’s a personal touch to Monadnock at Home that provides members with the spirit of community in addition to a built-in support system whenever help is needed.
• CommunityCare of Lyme, Martha Tecca
  CommunityCare of Lyme (CCL) is dedicated to helping all neighbors live the healthy, comfortable, and socially-involved lives they choose, so that “aging in place” can be a reality because we all live the best life possible.  Serving those who may need help and those who wish to share time, talent, and love, CCL links neighbors with trusted information, programs, services, and friends.

The Village to Village Network (VtV) – an organization lead by villages, for villages – will also be represented on this webinar by Jane Nyce, Co-President of the VtV Board. The VtV is a national peer to peer network designed to help establish villages throughout the country and continuously improve those in operation.

As our population of older adults continues to increase, the village network is likely to grow along with it. We hope you’ll join us so we can learn about the Village Model together and think of ways to improve the lives of those within our communities.

Frank R. Harnden (Rick) is a retired astrophysicist and manager who spent 40 years working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Cambridge, MA) and NASA Headquarters (Washington, D.C.). A founder and former Chair of the Board of Directors of the local non-profit Monadnock at Home (MaH), he is currently serving Treasurer. At MaH he brings his technical background to a wide range of challenges faced by such organizations in today’s world. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the national non-profit, the Village to Village Network (VtVN), which is overseeing and fostering the “Village movement” that is currently sweeping across the U.S. and several foreign countries. Rick’s personal experience with the final years of his own parents’ lives motivates his work with MaH and VtVN, whose missions are to empower older adults to enjoy the final years of their lives to the fullest.

With his wife Virginia, Rick moved to New Ipswich, NH, in the late 1990’s, prompted by an avid enthusiasm for the outdoors that he acquired as a youth working through the Scouting ranks to Eagle. They enjoy hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, boating and spending time with their family members in the beautiful Monadnock region. A few years ago Rick retired “early” (at age 63) so that he would be free to spend more time with their many grandchildren in their early years. A “veteran” of the last half-century of excitement in the “space age,” he enjoys sharing his enthusiasm for the Universe and its Mysteries with folks of all ages!

Jane Nyce retired to Cushing, ME in the summer of 2014. Currently, she is the co-President of the Board for Village to Village Network, a national non-profit supporting community programs to keep seniors safe in their homes and connected in their communities. Additionally, she is working with Methodist Conference Home in Knox County, ME to establish a village model program for Knox County under the leadership of
State Rep. Pinny Beebe-Center.

She was the founding Executive Director for Staying Put in New Canaan in Connecticut, one of the early “village” models, now in its eighth year of operation. She came to the program when it was in development in the summer of 2007 for her last internship in a Masters of Health Advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College. This opportunity followed two other internships for the degree: Research at United Hospital Fund, and work in Palliative Care for Mt. Sinai in Queens.

Before that, her professional work for over twenty years was in consumer insights and market research. She worked for Kraft Foods, Tropicana and Information Resources, a national research firm for clients such as P&G, Unilever, Quaker, Coca Cola, etc.  Her educational background includes an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Smith College and work in the doctoral program in Psychology at Cornell University.  In 2013, Jane was awarded the AAUW New Canaan branch “Woman of the Year” for her work with Staying Put.

Martha Tecca is healthcare consultant and founding president of CommunityCare of Lyme, a Village-based organization designed to help individuals and families live healthy lives in a compassionate, engaged, and improving community.

An executive leader with an entrepreneurial background, Ms. Tecca has been a catalyst for new organizational and system approaches to improvement.  She is a healthcare measurement and management strategist, who has worked with providers, community- and faith-based organizations, associations, vendors, researchers and policy-makers.  For twenty-five years, she has convened and facilitated groups of healthcare leaders working collaboratively to accelerate change by sharing data and management practices.  She is a recognized expert in home, palliative and end-of-life care, where she worked with groundbreaking industry leaders across multiple stakeholder groups to design and implement benchmark data bases that served as the basis for national quality measurement and reporting standards and practices. Early in her career, she worked with Bain & Company, a strategy consulting firm, and Genzyme, a major biotechnology company.  Ms. Tecca holds an MBA from Dartmouth and a BA in Biology from Harvard.

Martha is a recent “empty nester”, now deeply immersed in local, regional and national efforts to create healthy, happy and whole communities. She is a consultant with the Village to Village Network, a participant in the NH Elder Coalition, a member of the Upper Valley Aging in Community Coalition, a Trustee of the Lyme Foundation, and deacon and Health Ministry chair at the Lyme Congregational Church.

Kara Janes, LMSW, has a B.S. in Sociology from Springfield College and received her Master’s in Social Work, from the University of Maine in 2012.

During her time as a graduate student, she earned certificates in the Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education and in Leadership in Rural Geronotological Practice.

She volunteered to participate in the “Learning by Living” research project, developed by Marilyn Gugliucci at the University of New England, which entails living the life of an elder resident in a nursing home.

Because of her nursing home stay she received an award from the National Center on Caregiving, The Family Caregiver Alliance.

Having been raised in a small town in Maine, Kara is sensitive to common ethical dilemmas encountered in rural communities.

Kara became Program Manager of At Home Downeast in 2012 and in 2015 expanded the program to Mount Desert Island.