Berkshire Organizations Year in Review 2024
BY BRITTANY POLITO
iBERKSHIRES.COM
TUESDAY, JANUARY 7TH, 2025
It was a big year for ServiceNet, as it opened a new shelter in downtown Pittsfield and a farm.
Smiles were all around in May as farmers, human service workers, and officials cut the ribbon on ServiceNet’s new vocational farm on Crane Avenue. Whether it is planting flowers or growing fresh produce, the program is for “sowing seeds of hope” for those with developmental disabilities.
“What Prospect Meadow Farm is about is changing lives,” Vice President of Vocational Services Shawn Robinson said.
“Giving people something meaningful to do, a community to belong to, a place to go every day and to make a paycheck, and again, I am seeing that every day from our first 17 farmhands the smiles on their faces. They’re glad to be here. They’re glad to be making money.”
The nonprofit human service agency closed on the former Jodi’s Seasonal on Crane Avenue earlier in the year. It is an expansion of ServiceNet’s first farm in Hatfield that has provided meaningful agricultural work, fair wages, and personal and professional growth to hundreds of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities since opening in 2011.
In February, ServiceNet’s new 40-bed shelter at 21 Pearl St. opened. The Pearl has three dorms with bunk beds and end suite bathrooms, two recreation rooms, handicapped restrooms, and a laundry room.