High Spirit Community
Located on a working farm near Great Barrington, Massachusetts, High Spirit will provide individuals with developmental disabilities the opportunity for a full and meaningful life. We will nurture wholesome development and foster independence through a therapeutic community experience based on love and mutual respect. We want, first and foremost, to create a community in which enthusiasm, ideas, and energy are nourished and supported. By providing residents, day participants and caregivers with challenging, productive, fun, and meaningful activities, High Spirit will create a genuine work environment which recognizes the true potential of each member of the community. |
High Spirit Community Farm will provide social as well as vocational activities. High Spirit will fill the year with festivals, music, theatre, and meals in which members of the extended community can join. These joyful celebrations of the rhythms of the will pave the way for us to establish practices that bring direction and rejuvenation to all community members. We invite the wider community to partake in our activities centered on work, recreation, and health, thus promoting engagement and mutual understanding between our High Spirit residents and the larger world in which they function.
High Spirit will be a lifesharing community, providing home, work and social opportunity for people with and without disabilities. Our residents will live with families in homes with between one and three other disabled individuals, sharing communal living responsibilities. This arrangement is just one manifestation of the Lifesharing that will be the guiding philosophy of High Spirit. Residents will work on the farm side by side with co-workers, learning vocational as well as social skills. We hope that High Spirit Community Farm will one day be self-substaining in much of its food production, allowing our residents the satisfaction of feasting on and selling the food that they have harvested. We plan also to have a variety of productive and creative activities such as baking, weaving and flower growing that will provide meaningful work and income to the community