By Michelle Reese | East Valley Tribune
The adage “it takes a village to raise a child” is taking form near downtown Mesa.
There, the community “Hope Village” is under construction, preparing to be a place for parents with foster care children to live together with senior citizens ready to be “adopted grandparents” to the families.
The idea came to Mesa through the vision of Marie Lanzon.
Lanzon’s “day job” is a pediatric nurse. She’s worked with some of the toughest cases, children in residential treatment centers or those under rehabilitative care.
Daily, she meets children in foster care, who make up a vast majority of her cases.
“You put a history of trauma on top of being bounced around … I agonized about this,” Lanzon said.
At a friend’s suggestion, she became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) to work with children going through the Arizona court system. She learned the situation was worst than she’d realized.

