Montville Cares originated from Trustee Sally Albrecht and former Montville Police Chief Terry Grice coming up together with the idea of having a Community Events Volunteer Group to help plan fun, family friendly events for the Montville Township Community. The goal of this group would be to develop a personality as a family friendly community and great place to live in Medina County. From this idea, we then recruited a group of community residents to discuss the formation of a community event planning committee.
One of our first events was called Montville Music and Movie Night. This was only held for two years in August and it was a fun, simple event for the family to come out and spend time together outside, bring picnic baskets of food and drinks and enjoy a summer evening. We invited some food trucks and balloon making clowns to participate. We had face painting and had local talent come to make music and entertain the folks for the evening. The movie started later, once the sun set a bit, and families could make memories together and have fun in a safe park environment.
We continued to meet and plan and we were looking for a fundraising avenue for our group to broaden our horizons, give back to the community and continue to plan family friendly events. In 2013 we were offered to take over the Montville
5- K Fun Run and use it as our major community event and see what we could do with it. Since this Fun Run took place in October, we thought a Halloween Themed Event would be fun for the community.
In the beginning, this event was very small and basic with us making very simple Halloween displays in the woods. We called this event Montville Spooky
Walk. We invited the Montville Community to come and walk thru Cobblestone Park’s path in the woods, in a family friendly atmosphere, in hopes that they would give us a donation that we could turn around and donate to some very good charities in the Montville Twp. Community.
Our simple beginnings have grown by leaps and bounds and this once small event has now blossomed into a major community event for our township and the surrounding community. Originally, we had a hundred or so participants come thru our Spooky Walk, and now it’s thousands.
As our Halloween event has grown, we were fortunate to have one of our members, Rob Freedline, step forward and share his expertise as a lighting/sound/special effects professional. Rob has become the cornerstone to our legitimacy with this Halloween event. We have grown from a home spun, simple event to a large, professional level community event! We have families who now set their calendar to the third weekend of October, every year, because they bring their entire extended family to Spooky Walk and it is their “Will Not Miss Fall Family Tradition”. October of 2022 was our biggest year yet, with over 3,000 community members participating in our Montville Cares Spooky Walk and Trunk or Treat.
In 2015 we started the Montville Cares Easter Egg Hunt. We have volunteers, community members and organizations help us stuff an estimated 10,000 Easter Eggs and we invite the Montville Community to come out and have some spring Easter Fun!
We organize the groups by age so the little ones can collect eggs with other little ones, and then we gradually go up in ages.
Chicks: 2 – 4
Bunnies: 5 -7
Rabbits: 8-10
Lambs: 11 -12
The Easter Egg Hunt has been another wonderful, family friendly community event that Montville Cares is proud to put together for the Montville Township Community.
Montville Cares also participates in the Spring with Earth Day. In partnership with Spokes Café and Blue Heron Brewery, we sponsor a month-long series of events to bring people out to Austin Badger Park. These activities are springboards to get people in touch with nature and participate in the fun activities that are planned for every Saturday during April. On Earth Day we gave away tree saplings to anyone who wanted to plant of tree. Montville Cares really does Care! We welcome anyone who would like to be a part of our group to please reach out and come to our meetings. Interested residents can contact Christine Navicky at [email protected] or at the Montville Cares number 330-661-0123.