Six or seven years after doing more than 50 oral history interviews, ohoberlin is being repurposed to serve as a public journal for my Spring 2021 internship toward my Public Administration degree at Lorain County Community College. Thanks to the Oberlin Recreation Department (for which I also sit on the city’s commission), I am interning with the purpose of finding out the social and recreational needs of seniors in the city for their purpose of identifying how the city might engage those needs.

Cynthia Andrews is the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Lorain County. Andrews found me at work one day and offered herself for a conversation about what foundation does and might do in helping any community, including Oberlin, meet the needs of its seniors, its residents, more broadly. While it does not offer direct services, it helps fund many services that are offered.