What Color Do Hans' Neighbors Ask Him To Paint Their Windows?

Building Neighborhood Communities - An Introduction to Successful Neighboring (WO1000)

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October 20, 2015 - Author: Jeremiah Isgur

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What will this Handbook do for yous?

This is a handbook for all people. Whether you live in an older neighborhood, a new neighborhood, a suburb, a townhouse or a Victorian mansion, your neighbors are role of the fabric of your life. They are existent people who eat, slumber, play with their children and mow the lawns on your block. Every bit a group, y'all and your neighbors form a community. Together, y'all share neighborhood assets such every bit parks, churches, grocery stores and laundromats. And you also share concerns such as neighborhood prophylactic or a poorly maintained lot.

Because you alive at that place, y'all are a part of the community. Whether you lot connect with the people around you lot is a choice that you make.

This handbook will show you things you tin do to brand a conenction with your neighbors and improve your neighborhood. If your block is non attractive, this handbook will show you ways to make it nicer. If your cake feels unsafe, this handbook will show you ways to make it safer. If your cake is already great, this handbook will bear witness yous some means to arrive even improve.

This handbook will help yous:

Brand connection with your neighbors.
Exist a ameliorate neighbor yourself.
Brand your neighborhood a better identify to live.

Remember, making connections and planning improvements with your neighbors as a group, protects your interests as well.

Why is Being a Proficient Neighbour Important?

Where neighbors share a sense of community, residents are more than likely to feel rubber and secure and take a lower fear of offense than where in that location is no sense of community. People living in continued neighborhoods feel healthier and are happier well-nigh their lives and are more than likely to vote and recycle and to help others by volunteering and donating blood. For these reasons and many more, being a practiced neighbor and connecting with others on your cake not only makes the neighborhood amend simply also helps y'all personally.

Neighborliness is not a special talent - information technology is a decision! Anyone can be a good neighbor - information technology just takes a petty initiative, and the rewards go far worthwhile. Neighborhoods with a higher sense of customs savor a college quality of life. So do it for yourself and your family.

Wouldn't information technology be nifty if you knew all, or fifty-fifty some, of your neighbors a little better?

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Finding the courage to make new connections is non piece of cake for everyone. Just you and your neighbors will notice that it becomes easier subsequently the first step.

Try the following:

Find an alibi to walk around the block with your pet or children to make yourself visible.
Say hello to anybody y'all meet on your block.
Give your neighbors a compliment: "Your lawn/garden looks nice."
Take your lawn project to the front k. Work on your bike or lawnmower on your porch or sidewak. That way you tin say "howdy" to neighbors.
If you lot've lived on your cake for some fourth dimension, have the first step toward newcomers. Take new neighbors a plant or small gift, bake them some cookies or assist them unload their car, and welcome them to the neighboorhood.

Building Trust through Group Activities

So, you have just made a connection with your neighbors. That'south a good first step. Now yous tin can strengthen your relationships and build trust with your neighbors through group activities. You don't have to become friends overnight, but through activities together, you can acquire to trust each other. Over time you might become friends or merely stay friendly neighbors, but either way you can feel better knowing who is living around you.

Try some of the post-obit ideas:

Put up a neighborhood bulletin board or an electronic ane on the Internet.
Organize a welcome wagon for new neighbors.
Have a neighboorhood yard auction. Your neighbors are sure to come, and you might even sell a few things.
Organize a block party.
Research the history of the neighborhood.
Create a neighborhood map and share it with the balance of your block.
Do face painting for the kids.
Help a neighbor prepare for sever weather or a coma.
Become a few neighbors together to plant flowers in a median or clean upward a park.

Tips for Connecting with Children and Elderly Neighbors

If some of your neighbors are children or elderly persons, it is of import for them to feel involved in the neighborhood as well. They benefit greatly from feeling prophylactic, secure and continued to those around them.

Keep these ideas in listen when you are thinking about your neighborhood:

During hot or cold spells, check in on community elders to make sure they are condom and comfortable. Sadly, a few elderly people dice every yr during oestrus or cold waves because no one bothered to cheque on them
Mow the yard, rake the leaves or clean the gutters of an elderly neighbor. Many of them are unable to do information technology themselves and can't beget to pay someone to practice it for them. As well, it will brand the neiighborhodo nicer for you, too.
Plant a minor garden for an elderly neighbor or even only a potted lycopersicon esculentum plant. Have neighborhood children assistance you.
Help neighboorhood children create a lemonade stand
If you take a neighborhood newsletter, allow children be summertime reporters on fun things happening from their indicate of view. They can draw pictures or take photographs, too.

Neighborhood Cleanup

If a cake or corenr looks make clean, safe and well cared for, it sends a bulletin of unity to strangers and among neighbors. It tin can reduce crime, assist children feel safe and secure, and improve neighborhood appeal and housing values.

Getting your neighbors together for cleanup day moves you and them across personal boundaries to work together for the betterment of what you share.

Try these ideas:

Ask a neighbor to assemble to hash out a cleanup project on your block. Ask him/her to bring another neighbor. Now y'all accept a team!
Empty lots attract crime and pests. Get a squad to clean upwards litter and mow the weeds
Rake the extra leaves in untended areas and remove stray litter
Get neighborhood kids to aid yous clean up a park. Provide them with gloves and garbage bags and scout them go to piece of work
Contact the city to discuss graffiti removal, abandoned cars, tree trimming or other tough jobs

Build community pride past cleaning up as a team.

Neighborhood Beautification

Now that your cake is clean, why not make it beautiful? In that location are many pocket-sized things you can do to amend your firm and yard. IF all of your neighbors do a few small things, the results will be huge.

Planting flowers and gardens, repairing porches and repainting window frames can make a big difference in how you and others view your neighborhood.

In the summertime months, gardens flourish. Many urban gardeners trade tools, ideas, plants or seeds. Y'all probably know someone who has extra tomatoes, beans or flowers from their garden every twelvemonth. Sharing the compensation is fun for all ages.

You could:

Have a block flower-planting day. Put flowers in porch planters at every house, institute flowers in medians or vacant areas.
Yous could even select a shrub or bloom for all the houses on the cake every bit a show of unity. Or gloat special occasions such as the Fourth of July with red, white and blueish potted flowers.
Share actress pigment with neighbors and help them repaint the trim on the forepart side of their houses.

The Neighborhood Map

A neighborhood telephone list is a corking thing to have on mitt. A neighborhood map takes this thought a footstep further. This important tool is a elementary sketch of your neighbors and their children, phone numbers and other of import information to be used in emergencies or for planning neighborhood events.

There are many ways to create a neighborhood map. You tin can beginning past merely cartoon your block with houses as squares along the line of the street. Look at our example map for ideas.

Characterization each business firm with:

Names of neighbors and their children and pets
Addresses and 24-hour interval and evening phone numbers
Note neighbors who work at dwelling house or stay at abode during the twenty-four hours

Ask your neighbors for help filling in the empty boxes on your map as you are creating it. Offering them a copy, too.

Making Your Neighborhood Map

If You Take Children

Children can draw these maps for fun, to help them amend empathise whom they tin can contact in an emergency, or just to go a better sense of customs and place.

Permit them be creative in using colors and symbols for the things they meet effectually your block.

Your Neighborhood Clan

Your neighboorhood may already have a neighboorhood association. You can check with your local neighborhood council. If information technology'southward active, join it. If not, recollect most creating one. You tin start with just a few people and grow from at that place. THe resources on the dorsum encompass of this booklet can requite y'all more than information nigh working with existing neighborhood associations or about starting a new one in your neighborhood.

Neighborhood associations are powerful tools for dealing with your local government on matters of safety, zoning and local regulations. In improver, a neighborhood association can aid you plan group activities such as customs picnics or block parties.

Here are some ideas that neighborhood associations have used to build customs:

Organize a neighboorhood cleanup. Contact the city for information about a special trash pickup
Programme a community picnic or potluck to which every family brings a dish. Y'all could even have a chili cook-off or pie contest
Have games, raffles and music that everyone tin can savour
Start a neighborhood newsletter

Neighboorhood Watch

All beyond the country, Neighborhood Picket organizations help people work together to lower law-breaking in their neighborhoods.

A Neighborhood Watch can also become involved in customs cleanup and beautification projects.

Start by contacting your police force or sheriff's part and the National Law-breaking Prevention Council. They can provide data on crime patters, safety tips and law-breaking prevention techniques, too every bit Neighborhood Watch signs and window decals.

When neighbors are away, be sure to keep an eye on their firm and help keep information technology safe by making it look lived in

Brand sure foorpaths await used
Inquire neighbors going on holiday if yous can collect their mail and newspapers, and brand sure fliers are out of sight
Put stray lifs back on garbage cans and put them abroad afterward trash day
Leave your porch light on at night for the benefit of all your neighbors

Small-scale Acts that Go a Long Fashion

Here are a few enjoyable things yous tin do to make your neighboorhood friendly and cheerful. Exist creative, and bask life!

Leave a holiday care for as a surprise to brighten a neighbor'southward day
Get out cut flowers in a jar on the sidewalk with a "take one" sign
Visit a farmer's market and bring fresh produce to a homebound neighbor
Ask a longtime resident to share some stories of your block
Invite an elderly neighbour to an event he/she would enjoy
Rent a neighborhood teen to help you with some yard piece of work or to clean an elderly neighbor'due south windows
Invite a neighbor to your front porch for some iced tea
Requite your neighborhood newsletter editor a tip for the adjacent issue, or write an commodity yourself

Just get involved with your neighbors and your neighborhood and encounter how apace others join. Everyone wants a better neighborhood. And it's easy. Just take it 1 step at a time.

Acknowledgements

This handbook is the result of input from many individuals and groups. The idea for the handbook came from the Block past Block Connection Group of the Northwest Lansing Healthy Communities Initiative. The following individuals served on the Block past Block Connection Group and/or contributed for community edifice used in this handbook:

Millie Caesar
Annalie Campos
Karen Degerstrom
Martha Eveleth
Margaret Groves
Mary Hauser
Patricia Hemingway
Diane Holley
Ron Holley
Priscilla Holmes
Lucy Hunley
Kate Koskinen
Richard Miller
Leela Madhava Rau
Cheryl Risner
Rosemary Sandefer
John Schweitzer
Anne Smiley
Junko Takada
Casey Wells
Ron Whitmore
Donna Wynant

Boosted ideas for customs building came from various editions of Front Steps, published by the Evergreen Land Society.

Early versions of the handbook were written by:

Annalie Campos
Priscilla Holmes
Deanna Rivers-Rozdilsky
Erin Schwartz

Terminal copy was written past: Jeremiah Isgur
Art work, graphics and layout by: Julie Reynolds

The Sense of Community Team of the Center for Urban Affairs at Michigan State University coordinated the development and product of this handbook.

Neighborhood Resources

For neighborhood-based information and resources, contact:

Allen Neighborhood Center at (517) 485-7630, ancjoan@aol.com, world wide web.allenneighborhoodcenter.org
Baker Donora Focus Eye at (517) 485-0907
North Network Center at (517) 346-5794
South Network Center at (517) 272-7492
Wexford Network Center at (517) 882-2306

These organizations work to strengthen overall community health:

Eastside Neighborhood Summit/Allen Neighborhood Eye at (517) 485-7630, ancjoan@aol.com, www.allenneighborhood.org

Northwest Lansing Salubrious Communities Initiative at (517) 483-4499, info@nwlhci.org, www.nwlhci.org

Due south Lansing Healthy Communities Initiative at (517) 487-6828

To organiaze or strengthen a neighborhood association in Lansing, contact:

Lansing Neighborhood Council at (517) 372-6290

Citywide resources available to neighborhoods:

Community/Landlord Organizer at (517) 272-7488

Community Service4s of the Lansing Police Department at (517) 483-4469

Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Board Grants at (517) 483-4141, www.mayor.cityoflansingmi.com/NAB/

Statewide resources for neighborhoods:

Neighborhood Associations of Michigan at (517) 353-8610

Sense of Community Team at Michigan State University at (517) 353-9144, socomm@msu.edu, www.msu.edu/user/socomm

Contact Us

John Schweitzer
Sense of Community Project Team
Middle for Urban Affairs
Michigan Land Academy
(517) 353-9144
socomm@msu.edu

We're on the spider web at: world wide web.msu.edu/user/socomm

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