Residents work together to create window inserts to use towards a community project.
What an appropriate time of year to tell you about efforts to conserve heat!
Wake Robin is well known as an environmentally focused community. We are a member of SSAFE (Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment) and there is a resident-run group called the Climate Change Task Force. Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle are actions we take every day. It’s not surprising that some of our residents got involved with Window Dressers, a non-profit based in the Northeast that has a simple, inexpensive answer to keeping warmth inside the house.
Window Dressers began in Rockland, Maine with an insulation project at the Universalist Church. It worked so well that it quickly spread to other places. These are custom-sized pine frames wrapped in two layers of tightly sealed, clear plastic film and finished with a compressible foam gasket to function as interior storm windows. They fit inside the window frame without the use of fasteners. They are easily installed and removed.
That explains what they are, but how do they get built? This is where the volunteer labor comes in and how Wake Robin residents jumped in with both feet. The Window Dresser model depends on Community Builds to make the inserts in one marathon session to meet all the orders placed. Judy R. heads up the effort at Wake Robin and she went to a Build in Middlebury along with residents Jim W. and Maggie H. to learn how to do it. They set up their own Community Build in the Shelburne Town Hall and another 15 Wake Robin residents joined in for the workday last October. They made nearly 200 inserts!
Neighbors helping neighbors to save energy and reduce heating costs; a simple way of spreading warmth.
