Janice and I went to the Craigslist Foundation bootcamp at UC Berkeley this past weekend where the theme was “empowering communities”. There were so many interesting and inspirational speakers talking about how to build or strengthen communities. When we started Alameda Backyard Growers, earlier this year, the idea was to build community, one veggie at a time. It’s been great to see how we are laying the foundations for a stronger community with your help because we are all in this together.
All this talk of community makes me curious about our community so I’d like to pose the following questions to you to start you thinking.
What is the one thing you could do this week to further strengthen community in your street?
Is there someone you have been meaning to contact or to go and see in the community?
Tell us about your good deeds so that the rest of the community sees and gets ideas from that.
Posted by Adam Gillitt on August 16, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I think one thing people don’t do enough of is just to say hello to our neighbors. It’s so easy to do, but when we’re busy rushing to and fro, it gets forgotten.
Then, for those of us who do have gardens, I have found that my neighbors are usually fascinated that I am growing FOOD! Right here in Alameda! And nobody says no to an invitation to check out the garden to see what’s growing. And usually, since so much is ripe at once, it’s not much trouble to invite neighbors to pick something to take home and enjoy themselves.
People don’t tend to forget the meal they had of something freshly grown and picked from a neighbor’s garden!
Posted by backyardgrowers on August 16, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I agree that people don’t tend to forget the meal they had when it was something grown and freshly picked from a neighbor’s garden. I’m going to enjoy some cool purple beans from Janice’s backyard!
Posted by Dick rudloff on August 18, 2010 at 10:23 pm
A neighborhood building idea would be to put vegtable signage on my front yard garden telling people walking by what’s growing and to contact me when they are ripe so they can have some
Posted by backyardgrowers on August 18, 2010 at 10:30 pm
What a great idea! I’d love to have a sign that says something like “I’m an Alameda Backyard Grower – here’s what’s in season – tomatoes.”