Communicating

Looking for a Village address to send a letter or care package to a summer villager?  Find a complete list of addresses here. 

If you have a concern or question about how your child is doing, the Village dean is happy to receive your call, to look into your concerns, and to assist in any information exchange in a way that is least disruptive to the villagers and the immersion program. Please work first with your Village dean to have your questions answered. Outside of an emergency situation, parents can find out any information they need about their villager’s adjustment to the program though communication with the dean. Nearly fifty years of programming has taught us that direct parental contact with a villager (except in cases of emergency) often serves to take the villager’s mindset out of the program and can exacerbate any lingering homesickness.

Staff members want to be there for villagers — to celebrate their accomplishments and help them work through new challenges. Allowing your child to build the kind of relationship with the counseling staff that fosters trust in the adults closest to them at the Village enables our staff do their very best for your child.

Most villagers will be so busy they may find it hard to drop their family a letter! If that proves to be the case for your child, you will be able to learn about your villager’s experience by checking our Web site for Village Production Pages describing their experience. Not all Villages are able to maintain a daily online update, so if there are things about which you want to inquire, please call the dean.

Your villager will not have access to telephones, e-mail or faxes to communicate with you unless there is an emergency. You have the following options to communicate with your villager:

Emergencies
The first step is to call the Village dean. If he or she does not return your call within an acceptable amount of time, please call the St. Paul (651.647.4357), Moorhead (800.222.4750) or Bemidji (800.450.2214) office. Our priority will be to assist you as soon as possible. Business hours at Village sites are 9 a.m.-6 p.m. during sessions. Business office answering machines are checked regularly for emergency messages.

Telephone Calls
We highly discourage non-emergency phone calls to your villager. In an immersion program, a call from home interrupts the careful building of the immersion experience for the villager (and for other villagers who are aware of the call and staff who are involved). If you have a concern, the Village dean is happy to receive your call, to look into your concerns, and to assist in any information exchange in a way that is least disruptive to the villagers and the immersion program.

Villagers traveling with cell phones will not have them during their session. Please read the CLV-unplugged policy in the handbook you receive with your Welcome Packet materials.

E-Mail and Internet
Internet access at the Villages is for educational use only. Villagers will not have access to personal e-mail.

Faxes
You may send a fax directly to the Village site. Your villager’s bank account will be charged $1 for every faxed page received during his or her session.

Fax messages sent to villagers are distributed daily with regular mail. Faxes must be addressed with the villager’s legal name and session number printed clearly on the top of each page. Faxes received prior to 10 a.m. Central time are normally delivered that same day. Villagers do not have access to fax machines to send messages.

Letters — Old-Fashioned Fun
Receiving mail from home is a highlight for villagers, so we encourage your family and your villager’s friends to write often. They can also communicate with you by mail, so encourage them to do so. Villagers receive their mail at a specified time each day. Please keep in mind that mail delivery to the Villages may take longer than usual because of the rural sites.

Packages
In accordance with our customs procedure, packages are opened by the villager in front of a staff member monitoring for items not permitted in our program. If you have questions about a particular item you’d like to send, please contact the dean of the session your villager will attend. Please do not send food items because of serious allergy concerns of some of our villagers.