User:MarianneRobertsVA/Innisfree Village

INNISFREE VILLAGE

Innisfree Village is a fully licensed, nonsectarian, residential community with adults with intellectual disabilities. Founded in 1971, this nonprofit community is located on 550 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains outside the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

MISSION
Innisfree’s mission is to provide a lifesharing home and work environment for adults with intellectual disabilities and for the full-time, live-in volunteer caregivers and long-term staff members who care for them. All Innisfree community members are encouraged to explore a meaningful and challenging life, and all work interdependently to empower themselves and each other in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

FOUNDING
Innisfree Village was founded in 1971 by a group of parents who were searching for an alternative to institutional care for their children with intellectual disabilities. They envisioned a place where their children would share their lives with their caregivers and would be considered family members. Their children were only youngsters at the time, but these farsighted parents were preparing for the time when their offspring would be adults and would need the stimulation and satisfaction of living and working with others.

HISTORY
The search for an eventual home for these youngsters led to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Central Virginia. With the purchase of a 400-acre farm outside Charlottesville, the Innisfree dream became a reality. Innisfree’s founding Executive Director, who shared the lifesharing vision of the original families, moved into a large farmhouse already on Innisfree property with his own family and with Innisfree's first two adults with disabilities. Within the first year, more families and individuals with disabilities joined the community, and construction began on new residences and on a woodshop that would serve as Innisfree’s first therapeutic workstation for coworkers. More than 40 years later, Innisfree has expanded to 550 acres, almost 40 adults with disabilities (called coworkers) and 30 volunteer caregivers and long-term staff members, several therapeutic workstations (described below), and 15 residential homes, two of which are in Charlottesville and serve Innisfree’s residents who are able to maintain part-time jobs.

TARGET AUDIENCE
Innisfree serves adults with intellectual disabilities throughout the United States and their families. Diagnoses represented at Innisfree include Down syndrome,  autism,  cerebral palsy, and  Fragile X syndrome.

Innisfree also serves as a model to the mental-health community, including facility administrators, social service agencies, and service groups from around the world. Hundreds of individuals have visited or lived at Innisfree to experience its way of life and learn about the pioneering ideas that define the Innisfree model.

In addition, Innisfree serves as a home and learning environment for the many volunteer caregivers who choose to offer their time and skills to help Innisfree coworkers.

LIFESHARING
Lifesharing at Innisfree means that coworkers and their caregivers live, work, and play together, sharing the joys, sorrows, satisfactions, and frustrations of everyday living. In this close-knit environment, everyone learns from each other, and community members can develop profound, lifelong relationships.

Regarding Innisfree's designation as a lifesharing community, in the 2007 legislative session of the Virginia General Assembly, the state legislature acknowledged the value of the Innisfree model by passing legislation defining a lifesharing community and articulating its special contributions to the greater community, ensuring that the Innisfree way endures. This state legislation not only established licensing and inspection criteria for Innisfree but paved the way for nonprofit organizations in Virginia and elsewhere to more easily realize their own visions of lifesharing communities.

WORKSTATIONS
On weekdays, Innisfree residents and their caregivers work together in therapeutic workstations that foster creativity and personal expression. Workstations include a bakery, community kitchen, farm, free school, herb and flower garden, vegetable garden, recycling center, weavery, and woodshop.

Many handicrafts are produced in these workstations. Products from Innisfree’s weavery and woodshop and granola from its bakery are sold at selected area stores and at craft fairs. Bread from the bakery is enjoyed at Innisfree community meals and in Innisfree houses. Free-range eggs from the farm are sold at local stores and restaurants. Organically grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers from Innisfree’s gardens are used at Innisfree gatherings and residential houses and are sold through a community-supported agriculture project called Innisfree Community Gardens.

VOLUNTEERISM
Volunteering is an essential part of lifesharing at Innisfree. Innisfree’s houses are primarily staffed by full-time, live-in, volunteer houseparents. These volunteers come from all walks of life and all over the world, bringing cultural traditions and ideas that enrich community life.

Innisfree’s volunteer caregivers are at least 20 years old and must commit to serve for a year or longer. They receive room and board, a monthly stipend, two days off per week, limited medical coverage, vehicle access, gym privileges, paid vacation, and severance pay upon completion of their volunteer stints. Volunteers with student loans are eligible for loan deferment opportunities.