Today we’d like to thank The Boedecker Foundation for its generous grant to support the Bob and Judy Charles SmartHome in Boulder. The mission of The Boedecker Foundation is to provide critical resources to nonprofit organizations that inspire positive change within diverse communities around the world. The grant from The Boedecker Foundation will help reduce the debt associated with constructing and equipping the SmartHome. This is the second time the foundation has provided a grant to Imagine!’s SmartHomes – it also provided a grant in 2009 to the Charles Family SmartHome in Longmont when the foundation was known as The Anthony H. Kruse Foundation.
This support is vital to one of Imagine!’s most ambitious projects. Over the past five years, Imagine! has built, and is currently operating, two SmartHomes. Imagine!’s SmartHomes provide permanent affordable housing for individuals with physical and developmental disabilities, and they incorporate cutting edge technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of services and supports for the residents.
As the first such homes in the nation, Imagine!’s SmartHomes are serving as a model for the future of residential care for people with developmental disabilities. They enhance the lives and independence of residents, augment the effectiveness of staff as caregivers, and provide cost and energy savings to Imagine!.
In addition, the SmartHome model has enormous potential to impact groups of people with related concerns (dementia, autism, chronic mental illness, and Alzheimer’s), as the homes are serving as living laboratories to create and test “SmartSupports” – assistive technologies that can be used in family homes to keep individuals with any kind of cognitive impairment living in their own homes for as long as possible.
To recognize The Boedecker Foundation’s support, the kitchen in the Bob and Judy Charles SmartHome will be known from now on as The Boedecker Kitchen, and will be recognized with a prominently displayed plaque.
