Associate Board Joins Village Nights at Mercy Home

September 26, 2025

Caregiving system engagement is foundational to Mercy Home’s therapeutic model. That concept plays a starring role in Mercy Home’s bi-annual village nights. Village nights are dinner celebrations that offer our young people’s the families an inside look at life at the Home.

“We do village nights as a way to connect families with staff, connect families with their kids, and connect families with each other, said Morgan Doyle, a program manager at Mercy Home. “This is a great way to build community and have some fun.”

The most recent village night featured something new.  For the first time, members of Mercy Home’s Associate Board volunteered to spend their evenings with our families.

“Over the past couple years, I’ve talked about how I want to not just bridge the gap between advancement and program, but also between our board members and program,” Associate Board liaison Chris Doherty said, referring to our full-time residential youth care programs. “I want our board to make those connections. Keli Shllaku (a director of our youth residential programs) liked the idea of our youth getting to meet some board members and getting to know them as well.”

Initially, Doherty said that he approached Shllaku with the intention of finding volunteer opportunities for the board. After Shllaku approved the idea and Doherty presented it to the Associate Board, members jumped right in, signing up for each of the different village nights.

“I was like this is genuinely one of the coolest things we’ve ever been allowed to be a part of,” Doherty said. “There is a need and a desire from donors for transparency and they want to know the real stories. We want to give them that chance to meet (the young people) and serve their families because that could be really powerful. I think putting faces to who the people are is a big benefit in the long run.”

At a back-to-school themed village night, Ethan Levy, an Associate Board member who was a youth care worker at the Home six years ago, pitched in to grill food for the event.

“This is the reason that I fell in love with Mercy Home to begin with,” Levy said. “I love building relationships and working with and serving the kids who live here. This is as close as it gets to reminding me of my time (here). I was so happy and had so much enjoyment of my time then, that it’s just a privilege for me to be back.”

Levy taught Julian, one of our young men who lives with us, about how to use the grill and techniques for cooking hotdogs and hamburgers.

“Honestly, it’s pretty cool (to have Ethan here),” Julian said. “He taught me about the pyramid structure you are supposed to use when structuring the grill.”

Village nights can be a centering experience for parents, providing them the opportunity to meet the other guardians of young people living at Mercy Home and recognizing common bonds. Individual families come to Mercy Home for family therapy, care planning meetings, and behavior management meetings. But village nights offer an evening where families get to have fun and spend quality time with each other and with their children.

“The kids do really look forward to it,” Doyle said. “(One young person made cookies. They helped set up and carried stuff back and forth. It’s nice to see them excited about it. Even with cleanup, they were just so quick to help.”

After one of the village night events ended, Levy and Matt Ronay stayed and played football with the boys.

“I was here to be of service and having the opportunity to engage with the kids and staff here while doing that was a bonus, Levy said.

At a music-themed village night, Associate Board Chair Nicole Tolentino and other board members helped set up, serve food and even met the families. Tolentino first got involved with Mercy Home as a Friends First Mentor, before volunteering as a tutor and joining the Associate Board.

“It’s one of those things where you know it’s a commitment, but when you think about it, you don’t feel like it’s a burden,” Tolentino said. “Spreading what Mercy Home is all about has been really important to me these last 10 years.”

“As a board member, you don’t always get to have opportunities to interact with the kids. So, to see first-hand what Mercy Home is all about is such a great opportunity for us.”

The village nights allowed the board members to see what Mercy Home does for its families to help them heal.

“We want them to see that these are just kids that have been through really hard times,” Doherty said.

While Doherty said that board members plan to attend the village nights in the spring, he would love to help find more opportunities for members to get involved at the Home.

“I tell the board that they’re going to remember this decades from now, Doherty said.”

Big thanks to our Associate Board members for their support of village nights, and for all they do to raise support for Mercy Home throughout the year. That includes social and fundraising events like their March for Kids Kickoff and Have Mercy! gala in the spring. 

The board will hold its annual Chicago Bears watch party next month at Green Street local in the West Loop.