Gillian Sewake grew up in Waterford and attended St. Johnsbury Academy, but when the 36-year-old returned to the Northeast Kingdom after years away, she struggled to find friends.
“We just didn’t see people our age,” said Sewake, who lived at the time in St. Johnsbury with her husband, Geoffrey. “There were high school students, and there were older folks.”
Then she had a chance encounter at a bar on Mill Street: The mother of a woman in a book club invited her to join the group. The first time Sewake showed up, she met a couple dozen women, all around her age and at roughly the same stage in life.
That connection is what Sewake and others now hope to bring new Kingdom arrivals through a chapter of the Vermont Welcome Wagon Project.
The project, a volunteer organization, launched last June in Chittenden County and expanded in recent months to the Kingdom’s three counties. It pairs current Vermonters with new or returning ones, aiming to better integrate them into communities. Those social interactions — in a state with an isolation problem — might persuade them to stick around.
In the Kingdom, the challenge is acute.
“Even though there are so many wonderful things about this area, it is rural and there is a lot of space between things,” said Derby Line resident Ally Howell. “So I think having those connections in between is critical.”
Howell and Sewake are both “hosts” — people who’ve signed up to welcome newcomers. The project organizers pair hosts with participants and send each person the other’s contact information.
What the hosts and newcomers do next to get to know each other is up to them, said Maire Folan, one of the organizers.
Folan chairs the Northeast Kingdom Young Professionals Network, a regional group that holds mixers and other events. It runs the Welcome Wagon chapter.
“Really, the goal is to decrease that learning curve,” Folan said. “Accelerate the time it takes folks to get connected to the community and figure out how this place works.”
Since the rollout in December, the chapter has found about 15 hosts, and three new residents have joined as participants, she said.
People can sign up for either role through the project’s website. Organizers monitor the lists and, every two weeks, send a newsletter to hosts with the first names and general locations of new arrivals. If a host sees someone is nearby, the person can reply and start setting up a meet-and-greet.
Though Howell and Sewake had lived in the Kingdom before, both had a hard time settling when they returned.
Part of the problem? Neither had kids, limiting their ability to make connections through local school communities.
Sewake — who lived in New York City until 2014 and now calls Peacham home — pointed to another barrier: A decline in after-church social activities, the kind she enjoyed growing up.
“There used to be really great formal mechanisms for getting new people engaged with the community, and those were mostly around churchgoing in New England,” she said. “That’s the sort of thing I want to be able to provide.”
Howell, a native of Newport Town, moved back to Orleans County about 10 years ago. The 33-year-old had been living in Portland, Maine, and had plenty of options for performances, eateries and nightlife.
“But here …” she said, trailing off.
Howell eventually found what she was looking for in West Glover, at the Parker Pie pizza restaurant. She went one night; tons of people her age were there.
“I really felt like I was going to stick around for a little bit and then skedaddle,” she said.
After that night, she thought: “I can deal.” And now she loves the region’s specialty food and drink culture.
But if she hadn’t decided to drive — or didn’t have the means to — she isn’t sure she would’ve been able to find connections so easily. The Kingdom’s isolated geography makes travel difficult.
For now, said Folan, organizers are working with the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative, the St. Johnsbury Chamber of Commerce, Catamount Arts and other groups to spread the word.
Project planners especially want to tell business owners, real estate agencies and co-working spaces about the effort.
“So as they get new arrivals, they can let them know about this resource,” Folan said.
And though the focus is often on young people, she said, the project is for anyone who has recently moved to the Kingdom.
