Village Incubator

We are transforming the experience of aging with the launch of the Village Incubator, sparking the development of future villages throughout the state.

 

WHY AN INCUBATOR

This bold, forward-looking initiative is crucial to meeting the needs of California’s older adult population–projected to exceed 10.8 million individuals in the next decade.

The Incubator empowers communities to organize and create their own unique villages to address this unprecedented increase in our aging population. The Village Model is especially important in ensuring middle-income seniors, often called the missing middle and making up 35% of the state’s older adult population, have access to vibrant communities that enhance and expand the ways we can age well. 

The Incubator also advances the state’s Master Plan on Aging and Disabilities, meeting its mandate for more villages. The Plan’s village initiative (#90) attracted $300,000 of foundation and private funding to support the new program. Within this decade, new and existing California villages will advance the Plan’s goal of building systems that offer housing, healthcare, connection, caregiving, and affordability for all older adults. 

ABOUT THE INCUBATOR

Many factors are essential to the successful formation and launch of a village. The Incubator will guide communities through a six-phase interactive curriculum that takes the user from the initial stages of community assessment and identifying potential partners, to engaging future village members and volunteers and determining the operational and governance structure, to officially launching the new village.  

Experienced Village Movement California staff and village leaders will provide guidance and resources along the way. Learning Community meetings offer the opportunity for sharing best practices and working through successes and challenges. Topical workshops provide training essential to the formation of a village. Mentors assist with additional support and advice. 

Incubator Advisory Team

• Pazit Aviv, Montgomery County Area Agency on Aging  
• Charlotte Dickson, Village Movement California  
• Dinah Frishling, Conejo Valley Village  
• Carol Haig, Village Movement California  
• Sue Kajawa, Pasadena Village  
• Carol Kitabayashi, Westside Pacific Villages, Village Movement California Board  
• Erick Larson, Village of Sonoma Valle, Village Movement California Board  
• Cy O’Neil, Village Common Rhode Island  
• Carolyn Ross, Village Movement California  
• JoAnn Schuch, Redwood Coast Village  
• Tricia Smith, Sausalito Village