New Life Village is a residential community where families seeking permanency for children impacted by foster care or trauma can find healing in a safe and stable intergenerational village. New Life Village is located at 4926 Venice Lake Ave. in Tampa.
Mariah Hayden, executive director of New Life Village, said, “The Village program allows children to realize safety, housing stability, permanency, healing and the ability to thrive within a trauma informed community. The Village hosts an on-site Trauma-informed Wellness, Resilience and Character Development Program. We exist to reduce the number of children in foster care by encouraging more families to adopt or to prevent children from entering foster care.”
New Life Village is the only community of its kind in Florida. It is a place where children in need can find a forever home.
Hillsborough Couty suffers from both a foster care and affordable housing crisis. There are not enough units of affordable housing options for seniors and low-income families. In addition, there are not enough foster homes for the number of children in need. New Life Village attempts to help alleviate both of these critical problems.
New Life Village was founded in 2012 and is designed for children formerly in foster care and/or affected by trauma. It provides its foster-adoptive-kinship families with permanency. It also offers elders seeking meaning and purpose. The community-driven intergenerational housing and integrated on-site services improve health and wellbeing, give housing stability and provide educational attainment for residents at all stages of life. Senior citizens who live in the Village serve as surrogate grandparents, tutors and mentors. Autonomous families also live at the Village.
It should be noted that New Life Village is not a group home.
Hayden said, “The most important thing you can do is to open your heart and your home to fostering and/or adopting a child from foster care.”
Other ways that you can help include making a monetary donation. You can also volunteer or attend a Village Luncheon and take a tour.
Hayden added, “We just finished construction of 16 new tome homes welcoming 16 new families, about 90 new residents. We now have 48 homes and about 180 residents. Next, we are building a basketball court, football field and dog park.”
For more information on New Life Village, please visit https://newlifevillage.org/.
