Yankee Trails

02 M A R C H 2 0 1 9 The Villages ® Community yankeetrails.com | 352.633.4643 T C L U B O F T H E M O N T H Valiant Villagers Contact Kelly McKiever at kmckiever@yankeetrails.com Would you like your group to be featured as Club of the Month? hink back to a day when you moved into a new place and didn't really know anyone. You weren't yet familiar with the sur- roundings but wanted to get to know the area and others who might be in the same shoes as you. That's the reasoning behind the formation of Valiant Villagers, a social group in The Villages of Florida. It's a group of people who bought homes around the same time, and wanted to get to know their new neighbors, so they es- tablished a social group. This was back in 2014, and the group is still going strong. Valiant Villagers, named after the development of about 150 neigh- bors, who get together for regular events, activities and getaways. Monthly, the neighbors will co- ordinate game nights, golf and take a few days to explore various beaches across the state of Flor- ida. They get together for water volleyball and boating, sometimes they bring their own boats, or rent boats, and they've rented pon- toon boats in the past. Each quarter the Valiant Villag- ers have a meet and greet, which usually has around 80 people in attendance, and each holi- day season they have an annual Christmas party. The group tries to coordinate annual cruises and have gone on four in the past four years with up to 70 people. They've been to Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean and they are in the process of planning their next cruise to the Caribbean through Yankee Trails. The Valiant Villagers has been a way for a group of people who didn't know one another but had at least one thing in common: they all moved into a new devel- opment at the same time. The so- cial group has provided them with a way to build a community, new friendships and ways to support one another - a family away from home so to speak.

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