Legacy Foundation joins Community Heart & Soul to announce Cedar Lake as first Heart & Soul community in Indiana

On Wednesday, May 14, Legacy Foundation teamed up with Community Heart & Soul to announce Cedar Lake as the first Heart & Soul community in both Lake County and the state of Indiana. As a Heart & Soul community, Cedar Lake will embark on a project with the organization that will allow residents and municipal leaders to voice how to best plan to enhance their community. The public announcement was made at the Cedar Lake Farmer’s Market.

Kelly Anoe, president and CEO of the Legacy Foundation, believes the Community Heart & Soul initiative can make a positive impact and set the community up for a better future.

“We wanted to bring an initiative that really focused on resident engagement and empowering the community to be a part of the decision making for their neighborhood,” Anoe said. “We looked at different models nationally, and we built upon the work we had previously done with Neighborhood Spotlight and found Community Heart & Soul. We put out the application process for communities to apply to be Lake County and Indiana’s first Heart & Soul community, and we selected Cedar Lake.”

Anoe feels that Cedar Lake was the perfect choice given the constant activities taking place in the community. She notes that the Cedar Lake Historical Association has a lot of volunteers and resident engagement, along with events such as the farmer’s market, to bring people together.

As a community, Cedar Lake will receive up to $80,000 in funding from the Legacy Foundation. The town will also receive training and technical assistance.

“We’re providing funding to support Cedar Lake as we launch this initiative and go through the planning process,” Anoe said. “We are looking forward to engaging residents, building community leaders, and seeing what comes out of the plan. We want to see what the residents are looking for in their community and work together with them on ways to implement it.”

Julie Zasada, project coordinator of Cedar Lake Community Heart & Soul, has been overjoyed with the Legacy Foundation’s commitment to this program.

“We are really excited that they chose Cedar Lake,” Zasada said. “It was a rigorous grant application that we had to apply for, and they have invested in so many unique programs over the years. They went out and saw Community Heart & Soul and said, ‘We’re going to do this for the very first time in Indiana, and we’re going to do it in Lake County.’ They learned about this program, and they’re highlighting it with us this year. We’re really excited to be able to demonstrate to the rest of the county what can happen for the community when people come together and share their hopes.”

The Cedar Lake Community Heart & Soul initiative contains four phases to imagine, connect, plan, and act. The first phase focused on imagining and building a volunteer team, a group made up of 25 residents.

This event helped the team showcase phase two, which focuses on connecting through story gathering. Attendees of the farmer’s market had the opportunity to come up to the Cedar Lake Community Heart & Soul booth to answer a few questions regarding their commitment to the Cedar Lake community.

Phase three is the planning phase where the team gathers feedback to develop guiding principles and common themes. The fourth and final phase of the action stage, where the team will bring these ideas to life.

“It’s a resident-driven project that is meant to engage everyone,” Zasada said. “There aren’t any requirements for any sorts of affiliations, so every resident is welcome to contribute their feedback. A lot of people have told us they love the farmer’s markets here and they keep coming back. We’re helping to uncover that type of information as we speak to the Cedar Lake residents.”

While this project is still fairly young, Zasada has seen the difference it has already made for the people in Cedar Lake. The volunteers have been working together with ease, and it’s largely due to the residents providing valuable insight to their team.

“This has really sparked something in a lot of the residents here,” Zasada said. “One woman told us this was long overdue to be able to talk to people about what they want to see for the community. That’s the spirit that we have permeating throughout the entire volunteer team. Everyone has different strengths, and so they’re volunteering for what they can accommodate. After just three months, we’ve already become a well-oiled machine.”

Along with speaking to the farmer’s market attendees at their booth, Legacy Foundation and the Cedar Lake Community Heart & Soul gave a presentation on the main stage at the event to announce that this community will reap the benefits of this initiative.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes for about a year now,” Anoe said. “We’ve had meetings and training for our volunteers, so this is really our first big public launch. It’s exciting for us to announce this publicly and get more people involved.”

For more information on the Legacy Foundation and the Community Heart & Soul, you can visit legacyfdn.org.