Thank you to each community member, resident, and staff and board member who attended our NeighborWorks Week Celebration in June!
With events in West Brattleboro, Putney, Bellows Falls, and Windsor, we loved being able to safely gather outdoors with the community we’ve seen mostly on zoom for the past year and a half. What a relief! The basic outline for each was: have fun, share laughs, stories, knowledge, and be in community. Each event brought it’s own flavor.
In West Brattleboro, at the Chalet we teamed up with the local CISMA (Cooperative Invasive Species Management Areas) chapter to 
learn about invasive species- how to identify them and how to properly manage. Then we pulled out the working gloves and
loppers, fired up the chipper (run with expertise by All About Trees) and got to work! We hauled buckthorn, chopped multi-flora rose, rediscovered long hidden perennials, removed a full dumpster of old dumped trash, and attempted to avoid poison ivy. It was a tremendous kickoff!
We packed up and headed up to Putney for a lovely afternoon in the green across from the Coop and next to the Community Gardens. With the opportunity to really walk the plot of land queing up for our new development, we had great conversations with community members and even got to play a round of Koup!
It was incredible to finally be in person in Bellows Falls talking face-to-face with the folks we’ve spent so many hours on zoom with discussing the Bellows Falls Garage project. Rockingham Roasters Coffee, Allen Brother’s donuts, great company and the rain holding off made for a great morning.
We wrapped up our tour at Windsor Village Property with a wonderful resident focused event. Kids and elders alike gathered to chat, dabble in some rock painting, and share space. Chatting with a few of the moms, they shared how thankful they were for events like these and that we should have more- we’re completely on board!
While this time post isolation and emerging into an opening state feels a little confusing to navigate, we were so grateful to be able to do this all safely and to have that in-person community connection we’ve been missing for far too long. Thank you again, for being a part of it and a huge thank you to our sponsor Brattleboro Savings & Loan for making it possible!
