Things were bright this past May on the campus of St. Tammany Health System’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital.
The sun was bright. The flowers were bright. And the smiles were perhaps brightest of all.
It was all because of a particularly bright idea, named Buddies for Life, designed to bring members of the community together and, in the process, forge friendships among two groups traditionally at risk of social isolation.
“It feels great to see it become reality,” said Nicole Suhre, executive director of St. Tammany Foundation. “We worked really intensely on this – and, really, this is just the start – but seeing it come together, it’s so gratifying and so fun.”
In this case, that fun centered on residents from the local Christwood retirement community, who buddied up with intellectually challenged representatives from STARC of Louisiana to beautify the hospital’s gardens with 111 flowering plants.
The hope is that it will be the beginning of some beautiful friendships.
“We’re going to do a yearlong set of projects, all different projects,” Suhre said. “The first one’s gardening, but we’re doing different things through the year to pair those two groups together.”
The whole idea is the result of the Chevron Community Fellows Program, operated in conjunction with Northshore Community Foundation and designed bring the leaders of local nonprofit groups together to form bonds and to better the community all at once.
Now in its third year, the program invites the leaders of 15 or so local nonprofits to participate in a yearlong project in which each is teamed with three others – which may or may not have any obvious connection, mission-wise – and challenges them to come up with a community project that leverages the unique capabilities of each.