What would make a community smaller, better, more kind…
From the brains of forgr.
“What would make a community smaller, better, more kind to one another? Connectivity? Common ground? Communication? Equality? Opportunity?”
Effort and good will belong on the list, too.
I’m not sure smaller is an intrinsically good goal for community. It’s not bad, but it seems an unlikely event in a healthy community. Communities are networks, and they’re human systems. They want to grow. Or complexify. Deepen. More connections… want… Anyway, it’s what tend to they do.
Unless smaller means more interconnected.
When I lived in Grand Rapids, I started going to a folk dancing group. Regular participants were attorneys, teachers, office workers, auto mechanics, professional musicians, retired people, nurse practitioners, and people whose occupations I never learned in the six years I went before moving out of town. We saw weddings, births, job changes, and plenty of birthdays. The networks affected by this small community can be inferred from the list of professions. Additionally, the small community called the Grand River Folk Arts Society was affected, and the networks it is associated with were affected by the dance group. The hall where the dance group meets lends its stability to the group, and–symbiotically–the group lends its stability to the hall.
Even so with forgr… potentially. The thoughts on process: registration, ID, the training sessions lifted from PA, and the earning of access by a community process. All good. The forgr process becomes a node in the community supporting the geographic component of community and addressing the brake apart concerns inherent in the internet. The symbiotic relationship (from a community-building point of view) is more obvious than in the dance group/hall example, since community-building is an explicit goal of the forgr project. If forgr is successful with its clients, then the forgr project becomes more firmly embedded in the communty.
Which bring up a question I’ve been wondering about. Who is the forgr client?
Smaller means interconnected. In the sense that people know, trust, understand and rely on one another.
The client is that person you see waiting at the bus stop, she’s that single mom with two jobs barely making ends meet, he’s that guy waiting in line for a computer at the library and the teenage girl in line behind him and the woman behind her , it’s the boy in the LOOP program that comes home at 6:00 at night to a sleeping mom and blasting TV, it’s the senior citizen who wants to read news about her friends and family three states away.
It’s for the under-served, the vulnerable, the people in our community.
forgr
March 2, 2008 at 4:37 pm
It still pivots on essential service to me. If participation in such a program becomes an essential service in the sense of streamlining administration, providing important communications, etc. then it must be available to everyone. With the recent explosion in Eastown, I was interested to see how short term news has become online. Three days after the explosion, information was hardly available. There was no in depth coverage despite significant community interest. There was no hub to hold together the information. There was more grousing about traditional media than the sort of impactful coverage that could enlighten the community and quell rumors.
I’m not saying that a tighter local communication will solve this, but it should provide a forum for such localized storytelling to reach an appropriate audience.
As far as clients go, it’s not “if you build it they will come.” It has to be an aggressive attempt to reach a disenfranchised audience and educate them about the possibilities while quickly engaging them in a process that presents real value.
Scott
March 3, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I totally agree. My experience with the Red Cross had taught me that quite quickly.
Not enough can be said about clearly posting valid information, telling people when they can expect things, and updating the information frequently. People need to know, and just posting a website and putting brochures in coffee shops will not do it. No.
It has to be in the skin of the city, and on the tongues of everyone, everyone needs to know exactly what it is and why they need it or need to talk about it…
Billboards
Door hangers
Radio ads
TV commercials
Press releases
Banner ads online
Newspapers and local publications
Magazines
Posters at bustops, phone poles, abandoned buildings, schools, colleges, shelters, missions, utility boxes, community centers
Postcards everywhere
A flier in every lunchbox, locker and cubby at every school
Nightly local news
Interviews on public radio and in the GR Press
Testimonials
Launch parties
Fundraisers
Contests
Websites
Blogs
Local celebrity endorsements
Facebook Causes
MySpace page
T-shirts
Churches
Recreational centers
Lobby’s
Mailings
Sessions in classrooms all over the city
Bumper stickers
You name it, it needs it. Right?
Marie-Claire
March 5, 2008 at 1:25 am