I’m so excited to share with you what the folks in the 1st cohort of our Neighborhood Accelerator program have done this past month. Here’s the Month 1 Update if you missed it.
This month, we’ve held gatherings, met a ton of our neighbors, and even got some of them to build alongside us. We started creating local emergency preparedness infrastructure, third places, and began organizing neighbors to make our streets safer for pedestrians.
A lot has happened and we’ve learned a lot along the way, so I’m going to distill a month of 15 people kicking ass down into a few key stories and learnings.
P.S. Our application period for the next Neighborhood Accelerator Cohort is open till September 8 so get on it if you want to do what these folks are doing in your neck of the woods.
Bethany Crystal in NYC
I need you to know that I could honestly write an entire post about everything Bethany did this month. She has been absolutely crushing it. But for the sake of brevity, I’m gonna share but one highlight from Bethany’s July.
In a park near West 75th St, Bethany got 10 of her neighbors together for a picnic + book swap. She remembered what our mentor Shani Graham said: “the people who show up are the right people” and decided that this was the group to take the next steps with. She asked the group to come up with a name for their neighborhood (they landed on the “Manhattan 75” – i.e. the coolest name ever, everybody go home). Then she wanted to see if they could create a signature event for their neighborhood and the group opted to shut their block down and have a party in the street later in the Fall.
She asked the group: “what are some really obscure things that no one else would do that we could do?” They pulled up wikipedia and looked at national food days in September and got excited about “Better Breakfast Day”. So their shut-down-the-block-party will have different neighbors and restaurants (from their block ofc) offering breakfast staples and an opportunity for the broader neighborhood to connect.
Once the group landed on a name Bethany got excited about going down to the dive bar on their block (called “Dive 75” naturally) and getting them to add a secret, off-menu drink called the Manhattan 75 that only neighbors know. I really hope you find all this as cool as I do because I’m exploding.
It doesn’t end there. Later her neighbor (who studied at Parsons School of Design nbd) volunteered to make a logo for their block and this is what they got:
Kathi & Stephen in Porto, Portugal
These two were in an interesting situation at the start of the program. They weren’t convinced that their neighborhood in Porto was where they wanted to live long term — and at the same time, they wanted to build a sense of community to raise their daughter, Luna, in like yesterday.
I suggested they do a one month trial in which they fully committed to their current neighborhood, got to know their neighbors and saw how they felt at the end of it (it’ll be good practice regardless).
So they set out to meet their neighbors. Door-knocking was terrifying for Kathi given her and Stephen being new to Porto and not yet speaking the language. But after some strategizing she and Stephen mustered the courage to knock on some doors. Later she decided to follow her instincts and hit the street. Here’s what happened:
And here’s what Kathi had to report after their second gathering (Luna’s birthday party in the park).
They’re slowly building the village it takes to raise a child. As time goes on they’re still not sure if their current neighborhood is where they want to live long-term, but what they do know for sure is that they’re capable of building it. Stephen shared that over the past month “one thing that became clear is we can create community anywhere we are if we commit to it and put the time into it.“
Grin & Diana in Boston, MA
You might recognize @grin from being a major contributor to Cabin for a while now. He gave this talk at the Network State Conference last year and has been the tech lead on the Cabin Labs team. He and his partner, Diana, have been building relationships with their neighbors for a long time. Here’s a highlight from their neighborhood that’s especially meaningful given the state of our world right now.
Savannah & Jon Bo in Boulder, CO
@jonbo and I had a pretty great month too. We flyered every door in our block (here’s how it went) which ended up being 100+ doors(!) and hosted 3 events.
Jon and I had conversations with our neighbors about the prospect of co-raising kids together in the next few years (!!), we’re meeting neighbors who are serious about slowing down the traffic that cuts through the main pedestrian intersection of our neighborhood, we’ve got new events that neighbors want to run in the pipeline, and it’s really starting to feel like a shared sense of ownership is emerging.
(I didn’t have time to ask each of these folks if they’re cool w me posting this on the internet, but I promise they looked like they were having a good time!)
We also helped our friend Vicki move into our building (she moved in yesterday as a matter of fact!). She’s a big community person and is excited to get involved in what we’re building here.
Shani in Perth, Australia
Shani Graham is both a neighborhood steward and a mentor in our program. If you watch her TEDx talk you’ll see why we wanted her to be involved in the Accelerator. She’s already created an incredible neighborhood community called the West Beacy Bunch. Here are some highlights from their neighborhood over the past month.
A group of people good at fixing bikes come by her neighborhood once a month and do just that for their neighbors.
Dahveed in Haifa, Israel
Neighborhood building is often hard, deeply personal work. But imagine neighborhood building in Israel right now. That’s what @Dahveed is doing. Every week he brings his friends & neighbors from different nations together for Shabbat dinner. He’s been diligently building community in a place where bombs could likely go off and where people could hate each other because of their differences.
Recently, after struggling to connect with some of his neighbors, he decided to create emergency preparedness backpacks for everyone in his building given that they don’t have a bomb shelter in their building. We’re in awe.
Charmaine in San Francisco, CA
Given her experience in the nonprofit scene, Charmaine knew she didn’t want to start a new neighborhood building effort in Alamo Park, but rather join already existing efforts. She partnered up with an event called Yappy Hour at a local park and started connecting with neighbors. Then she started hosting a breathwork event at a local community space. Turns out the folks who run the space are excited about making their venue more of a third place for the local community! Char is showing us that if you connect with the right people, there’s a lot that can be unlocked.
Shirah and Cam in Oakland, CA
@camlindsay and Shirah have been focused on emergency preparedness in their neighborhood given the likelihood of wildfires and earthquakes in the Bay. They’ve been attending local block parties and making friends with neighbors on walks to encourage them to sign up for an upcoming survival training they’re involved in. They figure that if they can get neighbors to have that deep of a conversation, they can begin to create a culture of mutual care and resilience.
^This is a screenshot, but check out the video of the block party, it’s way better.
Pierce in Legaspi Village, Philippines
This month Pierce brought his neighbors together for a sweet picnic and everyone was excited for the opportunity to meet each other. He also went to the condo board at his building (similar to an HOA) and spoke up for having more building support for social gatherings in the common spaces of the building and was met with a lot of support.
Forest in Olympia, WA
Forest is another neighborhood steward in our program who has been bringing together his neighborhood for years so he came into this program with different goals. In July he focused on building out his neighborhood page on the Cabin City Directory to attract cabin folk to his intergenerational neighborhood. Here’s a shot of Taco Tuesday, one of their weekly neighborhood events in Olympia.
Lessons Learned
There are many ways to meet a neighbor.
Originally I wrote the curriculum to encourage folks to knock on doors to meet their neighbors. But there are many approaches that neighborhood stewards employed to make first contact with their neighbors: going for walks and connecting with people in the streets (Cam & Shirah), attending and partnering on other gatherings where neighbors already are (Charmaine), setting up a lemonade stand in front of your building (Bethany), looking for flyers for neighborhood events and reaching out to the organizers (Charmaine), posting up in the park or coffeeshop and striking up a conversation with the familiar faces (Jon Bo & me). There are so many ways to meet neighbors if you open your eyes and make yourself available.
At the end of the day, this is about loving people.
The deeper we go into this work, the more I see how neighborhood building is really just loving people. We love our neighbors by opening the door to connection (putting ourselves out there, knocking on doors, starting conversations with people on the street, etc). We do things that express our love without requiring it in return (Dahveed making go-bags for his neighbors in Israel, hosting events to bring people together, building relationships 1:1, and generally showing up for people). As we deepen relationships with our neighbors, we’re starting to see that we can actually invite some really beautiful qualities to come forward in them: collaboration, collective ownership, agency, kindness, and most of all love. Communal love.
That’s it for now. In about a month, we’ll share our third update on the program here. I welcome any questions and thoughts you have in the comments below this post! And if you’re inspired to build a real sense of community in your neighborhood, check out the Neighborhood Accelerator or reach out to me directly at savannah@cabin.city. I’d love to connect. Applications are due by September 8.
If you want to see updates on the progress folks in the program are making, check out Cabin’s twitter. I’m posting wins and learnings there frequently.