In its second year, the employee-led Lozier Community Grant program supported 50 nonprofit organizations across the country. Recipients were selected by employee committees in all five Lozier locations.  Over the next couple of months, the recipient organizations’ stories of impact will be shared on LozierLink.

Greencroft Middlebury, a nonprofit retirement community in Middlebury, Indiana, offers housing options at all price levels to accommodate individual needs and personal finances. While Greencroft serves many communities in Northern Indiana, its Middlebury campus only had facilities for independent living in early 2023 and only offered part-time assistance to residents, if needed.

If individuals needed greater assistance, they needed to move to one of Greencroft’s other locations — the nearest around 20 minutes away in Goshen, Indiana. With the help of the Lozier Community Grant and many other community partners, Greencroft Middlebury was able to open an assisted living facility enabling residents who need greater assistance to receive it and stay close to their family and friends.

“I’m not as agile as I was before, and moving to the assisted living here means I don’t need to leave my community,” said a resident moving from independent living to assisted living. “It’s a friendly community and I don’t want to move away from Middlebury. I’m excited for the new facilities and our management here are excellent people.”

The new assisted living space will offer new and different stimulation and redirection technologies to increase cognitive skills, empowering those in residence.

“For our community specifically, we just haven’t had assisted living that we need,” said Greencroft Middlebury Director Tim Deluca. “We’ve seen a lot of people move out and they move to other facilities when they’ve needed the next level of care. That’s really what drove this project was seeing, folks that grew up in Middlebury or have wanted to make Middlebury their home need to move.”

Raising the funds for a new building was a tall task, but one the community rallied around. Deluca said he and the new residents are grateful for the local contributions, allowing those that need the next level of care to remain in their community.

“There’s such a good overlap with what Lozier is trying to do; they’re empowering their local plant here to say, what do we need in Middlebury? And that’s ultimately what we’re about.”

Click here to learn more information about Greencroft Middlebury. For details on the Lozier Community Grant program, click here.