RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
Community members were invited to Lakeland Village June 15 for an open house and “Old Fashioned Fair” featuring music, food and activities geared toward kids and those with special needs.
One popular event last Thursday was the Spokane Walleye Club's fishing tank, a large tub of water stocked with trout that could be caught and taken home for dinner. Club president Carl Haynes, a 32 year employee of Lakeland, said roughly 150 trout were donated by Soap Lake's Trout Lodge.
Spokane-based ACS Ponies brought a traveling petting zoo with rabbits, goats, a pygmy pony and a llama. A duck named Donald offered hugs to all takers while specially trained chickens “roosted” on the heads of willing participants.
Meanwhile, square dancing troupe “The Sundancers” put on a show while Shriners clowns tied balloon animals nearby. Square dancer Eleanor Schiffner said the group often teaches lessons to special needs students as well as classes at area schools. She said her husband Ed, who acted as a caller for the dancers, had two sisters living at Lakeland before they passed away several years ago. “This is one of the best things in Spokane,” she said of the facility.
Crafts, food and plants were for sale around the Lakeland campus throughout the day.
Garden program manager GeGe Haugstad, a 23-year Lakeland employee, said about 14 special needs clients help plant herbs for sale year round as well as organic vegetable bedding plants in the spring. “We have work all through the year,” she said. “The clients love to work in the dirt.”
Haugstad said the 4-year-old planting program is great for non-ambulatory individuals and is sustainable – during one week this past spring the program sold $900 worth of plants.
“We just want to keep Lakeland open,” Haugstad said. “I'm not going to be around too many more years working with these people but this is a great place for them.”
State budget woes and a trend toward community housing over the past few years has decreased funding dramatically for residential habilitation centers like Lakeland, although the facility weathered the latest round of state cuts with relatively minor reductions.
The July 15 event also recognized members of College in Resident Volunteers (CIRV), a program that for the past four decades has provided reduced room and board to about 40 area student volunteers. College students from Eastern Washington University as well as Community Colleges of Spokane, Whitworth and Gonzaga University, live in what was once Lakeland's staff housing in exchange for at least 15 hours of weekly volunteer time.
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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