History: 

Brenda Krause Eheart, a University of Illinois professor of sociology, together with her colleague Marty Power, spent a decade researching what happened to “unadoptables” - children and adolescents who spend their entire youth being bounced from one foster home to another. Eheart and Power found that the adopting parents were simply not equipped to deal with such deeply troubled or chronically ill young people.

“We went to court with families when they gave up their parental rights after they’d adopted," Eheart explains. "We followed those kids to institutions because nobody else would take them. We heard those children saying they wanted to commit suicide, that they were now age 11 or 12 and here was one more major rejection. And we knew why those adoptions weren’t working. It wasn’t because those families were mean, sadistic, or didn’t want to do the right thing. But they had no help. They needed tons of emotional support and tons of information."

For nearly two years, Eheart and a group of like-minded friends developed a vision for an entire community built around these children. “My dream,” Eheart says, “was to create a place where ‘unadoptable’ children would be adopted by caring parents who would themselves be supported by full-time therapists and psychologists as well as backup adult guardians to provide relief from the stress of dealing with extremely troubled or ill children." Their research was the driving force behind Generations of Hope (a 501(c)3 non-profits corporation) and Hope Meadows, its first program site.

Hope Meadows was officially launched in Rantoul, Illinois in 1994. What began as a university based research project in the late 1980’s is now a thriving intergenerational community. It was built on a 22 acre converted military base that was acquired from the pentagon, and currently houses 12 Hope families, 50 Hope children, and 60 Hope senior citizens. Because of its overwhelming success, Generations of Hope plans to replicate this community in states all across the country. 

Hope Village is modeled after the concept of  Hope Meadows.