Giving Compass' Take:

• Here is the story of how Dottie Fromal created The Hive, a safe space for children living in a struggling town called Nelsonville, in Appalachia, OH. This space is helping to rebuild and support the community. 

• How does loneliness exacerbate the conditions of poverty?  How are community-based solutions helping address this issue? 

• Read about successful community framework for addressing the opioid epidemic.

.Dottie Fromal came to Nelsonville two years ago “to visit some friends,” then never left. “Somehow Nelsonville sucked me in,” she says, which isn’t something you normally hear about a struggling coal town in Appalachian Ohio. “I just started doing things here, and I guess I didn’t stop,” she says, trying to explain. “You don’t always know what the right path is, but the path is always right, you know?”

Dottie didn’t come to Nelsonville to do anything heroic, but when she encountered kids here who were struggling, it was a kind of struggle she recognized.  Her path ultimately led her to running the Hive, an afterschool drop-in center occupying an old storefront on the public square in Nelsonville.

The Hive is a bright, clean, safe space for kids to be in the afternoons and evenings—in a town where positive home environments are few and far between. It has books and toys and computers—as well as a shower and a washing machine, for the many kids who don’t have running water at home because their utilities have been shut off. But, more than anything, it’s a place for kids to feel seen and connected, and to have a break from the relentless challenges they face every day.

While leaders across America are searching for new techniques and technologies to reconnect people to each other and to their communities, Dottie’s work suggests that the starting point might be a lot simpler than we think.

“Some of these people don’t have anyone to talk to all day long,” she laments. “But I find that if you make a little bit of eye contact, people will spill their life stories,” she adds, which opens up the pathway to connection, and ultimately to hope.

Read the full article about community progress by Shalyn Romney Garrett at The Aspen Institute