Corfu Heart & Soul/Corfu- from left Carrie McMullen/Co-Chair, Ken Lauer/Village Trustee/Applied for the grant, Katleen Dethier/Co-Chair, Paige O’Connor/Rural Community Impact Associate at the Rochester Area Community Foundation
On Sunday afternoon, Corfu Heart & Soul held a Community Ice Cream Social at Homestead Park in Corfu to hear from the community and collect their ideas about the future of the Village of Corfu.
Community Heart & Soul is a resident driven process that brings people together to identify what matters most in a community. Using storytelling, conversations, events and community participation, the information collected will assist in shaping a shared vision for Corfu’s future and also preserve the traditions and values that make the village unique.
Co-Chairs Katleen Dethier and Carrie McMullen
“The initiative itself has four phases,” says Co-Chair Katleen Dethier.
“We completed phase one, and we’re now in phase two. Phase two is all about listening to residents what their hopes and dreams are for Corfu. So, this is sort of our unveiling. Here we are. This is community heart and soul. We wanted to give back to the community by providing free ice cream. We wanted to give an opportunity for community organizations to raise some money. That’s why we have the Boy Scouts doing our food, and we have a bunch of community groups here with their tables, and we are collecting some data here, which is the whole reason for phase two.”
Village Trustee Ken Lauer applied for the grant in February. In June, they received a check for $72,490 from the Rochester Area Community Foundation. Rochester Area Community Foundation is one of the funding sponsors alongside Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo in partnership with Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation.
“There’s going to be themes that are going to emerge from that data and those themes are going to be turned into value statements. Those value statements are not going to be used by the village board to make decisions in the future, and short-term decisions could potentially be two years down the road, which is short-term because this initiative is two years. What do the residents want, and we can create an action plan moving forward to create and to actually do those types of things. For instance, they say, oh, we want a community garden. Well, then that’s what we work towards. Then we create an action plan, and we move forward on that.”
“I think this is great,” says Paige O’Connor, Rural Community Impact Associate at the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
“When I drove in right down on Main Street, I was just so in awe of how many cars were parked, not only, but also the amount of people that I’ve shown up, and this is the first time I’m at least seeing just the true encapsulation of core few coming together. It’s really amazing to see this core team of Katleen and Carrie and a few other volunteers make this happen. I mean, the amount of tents and people together, just talking-it’s just amazing to see.”
The Town of Carlton in Orleans County also received a grant for a Heart and Soul project along with the City of Batavia. The next event Corfu Heart and Soul will be a part of is on October 3rd for the Autumn in the Village event from 11AM-5PM at the Corfu Plaza parking lot. They will also have a table at the Corfu Farmer’s Market through the last day of the market in September.
“I think it’s just really important that why we’re doing this is because community heart and soul is about sharing what you love most about your community and creating a vision together, and we do that through story gathering. And story gathering is really important because it’s not only a reflection of who lives, works, and plays in the community, but it’s also can bring out hopes, dreams of what people would like to see in their community. And that’s important because it hones in on the reason for belonging, sense of place,” says O’Connor.
Link to Facebook group:(11) Corfu’s Heart & Soul | Facebook
