The Pasadena Village website is much more than a place to find a calendar or sign up for an event. Over the years, it has become something of a living record of the Village itself. It's a place to learn what is happening today, discover our history, and hear from the people who have helped make Pasadena Village what it is.

The story began in 2012, when Dave Folz joined Pasadena Village as a volunteer and created our first website. At the time, the site was built on a platform designed primarily for clubs and organizations. Its principal purpose was straightforward: to give Pasadena Village an online presence and provide members with information about Village activities.

As Pasadena Village grew, however, so did our sense of what a Village website could be. A new platform, Helpful Village, became available, designed specifically for the Village model rather than a traditional club. The change eventually gave us an opportunity not simply to update our technology, but to rethink what we wanted our website to accomplish.

That opportunity became especially important in 2020, when Pasadena Village faced a major financial and organizational challenge. We had lost an important source of funding, raising fundamental questions about the organization's long-term sustainability. We formed a member task force to consider where we needed to go next and how we could sustain the values that brought the Village into being.

One of the task force's conclusions was that Pasadena Village needed to grow and that we needed stronger marketing and community engagement. Not long afterward, with a new executive director in place, the Village moved to the new Helpful Village platform.

The website also received a fresh look. A volunteer design team introduced more photographs, updated colors, and a more welcoming visual presentation. At about the same time, a new Communications Committee began expanding the website in ways that went well beyond providing information about upcoming events.

A new section, About Pasadena Village, explained what Pasadena Village was, what it offered, and why someone might want to become a Villager. This was an important part of the Village's new outreach effort. But perhaps even more significant was the introduction of blogs. For the first time, the website offered an easy way to add new material and, importantly, gave Villagers a place to tell their own stories and express their creativity.

Over time, a variety of blogs emerged, each with a different purpose. Village Voices, later renamed What the Village Means to Me, gave Villagers an opportunity to speak directly to one another about what Pasadena Village meant in their lives. Meanderings became a home for creative work, including essays, poems, short stories, and other writing by Villagers.

1619: The Lingering Imprint grew out of one of the Village's ongoing discussion groups, exploring the continuing impact of slavery on American life. Racism Now provided another avenue for Villagers to share personal experiences and reflections on racism today.

The website also continued to serve its more practical purposes. The calendar provides information about Village activities and lets people sign up for events, request rides, and arrange other support. Visitors can learn about joining the Village, donate, or connect with Pasadena Village on Facebook and Instagram.

One particularly useful addition came from a Villager's suggestion: the Explore This Website page. In effect, it serves as a map of the website, giving visitors a quick overview of the many different pages and resources available. For anyone who has ever wondered, "Where do I find that?" it provides an easy way to see just how much the website contains.

The website has also become an important resource for Villagers themselves. A members-only directory provides contact information, photographs, and biographies when they are available. The site also serves as a repository for important organizational documents, including the strategic plan, bylaws, and operating manuals used by members and volunteers.

And then there are the stories that could not have been written in advance.

After the Eaton Fire in January 2025, Pasadena Village launched an archive project inviting Villagers to record their firsthand experiences of the disaster (PV Response to the Eaton Fire). These are not simply reports about what happened. They are first person accounts by people who were “witnesses to history” – people describing what they saw, felt, experienced, and remembered. The hope is that these accounts will eventually become part of a permanent historical archive being developed with Cal State LA.

While not really part of our website, another important element of our communication is the Pasadena Village YouTube channel where we have videos of presentations that have been made to inform and entertain our community.

In this way, the website has become something more than a communications tool. It has become a place where the history of Pasadena Village is created and recorded.

The website continues to evolve. One newer feature is the monthly Pasadena Village newsletter, distributed digitally during the first week of each month. The newsletter introduces readers to the latest articles, with links leading directly to the stories on the website. In this way, each month's newsletter becomes an invitation to explore the larger world of information and stories that the website contains.

New and longtime Villagers alike can also get help learning how to use these resources. Monthly orientation sessions give Villagers an opportunity to meet with Village teams and staff, learn more about the many resources available to them, and become more comfortable using the website. These sessions appear on the website calendar, where Villagers can easily sign up.

There are really two audiences for the Pasadena Village website. It is first a resource for Villagers – a place to find information, participate in activities, connect with one another, and discover more about the organization they belong to.

Second, the Pasadena Village website serves the larger community. It is a window into Pasadena Village, showing prospective Villagers, families, supporters, and friends what the Village is and what its members are doing. The website also provides information about events and services available to the public. The Community Events page lists member-run events open to the community, our neighbors and friends, whether they are a senior, a retiree, or someone who might just be interested in the topic. Another community resource is our auxiliary website AgingSGV.org which helps seniors connect with services and support available in the San Gabriel Valley.

But perhaps its greatest value is something that cannot be captured in a list of website features. A website can tell us when the next event is. It can tell us how to join. It can provide a directory, a calendar, a newsletter, a photograph, or an organizational document. But through the stories, reflections, creative work, photographs, and personal histories contributed by Villagers, the website also tells us something much deeper: who we are.

That is why the Pasadena Village website is best thought of as a living part of the Village. It is constantly changing as new people join, new stories emerge, new activities take place, and new ideas are shared. It preserves some of where we have been while continually adding to the story of where we are going.

If you haven’t explored it recently, our website is worth another visit. There is far more there than you may remember – and, increasingly, much of it is not simply about Pasadena Village. It is about the people who have made, and continue to make, Pasadena Village the remarkable community it is.

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