Front Porch Forum Helps Calais Neighbors Connect

What if nearly every household in a small rural town were in daily communication with each other? What would change?

#VT -

…a commendation to you and your staff!  What you produce is top quality, first class.  I LOVE FPF!  It’s how I found my eye doctor, was able to donate notebooks to a worthy cause, way to volunteer in the community, and even though my recent bike posting did not net a sale, it felt good to try and sell it before it heads to Earl’s bike swap on Thursday.  I feel more connected to my community because of our FPF.  Thank you for what you do for our community and all others in VT!!

#VT -

Wow.  I’ve received so many offers to my request to borrow a hole saw.  If I wrote a note of thanks to each of you individually, it would take me a week! So please accept this FPF posting as my note of thanks to each of you.  This is a great community!

Thank you everyone for your generosity!  My plea for perennials was answered and I found myself with a full carload of lovely plants from people’s gardens.  I will have to expand my current flower beds to keep up with all the plants I’ve acquired.  An added bonus was getting home garden tours from those that donated plants and learning about varieties along the way.  Impressive green thumbs out there. Many thanks Starksboro and Front Porch Forum.

Classic FPF… ask for help and get a huge response… PLUS get to know more of your neighbors along the way.

#VT -

The cause of the flood is an abundance of generous and helpful neighbors living in the Champlain Islands…

Less than 16 hours (half of which we have been sleeping) and I have been offered 12+ heaters already!!

Thank you, Islanders!

And 25% of the households in East Montpelier are on board their FPF already, just three months after launch.  And they’re putting it to great use.  Here’s a note posted by Barbara today…

Hurrah for Front Porch Forum and the generous people of East Montpelier! Saturday we asked for a wheelchair and intercom and today we have both!  We had four offers of wheelchairs and two offers of intercoms.  Thank you all.

If you’d like to bring FPF to your town in Vermont, please enter your information on our home page, or contact Michael Wood-Lewis.  (Here’s a map and list of our current coverage area.)

#VT - I signed up for Front Porch Forum about 3 months ago and made first response recently to a neighbor’s request for a place to store her car. I told her we didn’t have one but if she ever wanted to sell it we may be interested.

That started a series of emails and that led to conversations and then a face to face meeting. She understood my being nervous about my 16 year old son spending his entire savings account on a used car. How would we know if the engine or some other big part would need to be replaced soon after we bought it? Turns out we go by her house everyday – we began to trust each other.

She wound up putting in new brakes before we bought the car because she didn’t want my son getting in an accident! We even bartered a little – she needed the use of our truck and we needed a little off the asking price. It was a win win.

We are still in touch and she may be hiring my son for odd jobs. And the car – a Suburu – is still running great. Thanks FPF for connecting us!

Thanks to Pam in Richmond for sharing this today.  We hear variations of this tale over and over at FPF.  Building real community in a place doesn’t happen quickly and it takes many strands to form strong local webs.

#VT – My “seeking snowshoe” post received many responses and we were able to get out and enjoy the fresh snow because of our generous neighbors. Happy New Year to all – we are lucky to live in such a great community!

That was posted by Laura on the Huntington Front Porch Forum today.  Happy New Year indeed!

In 1925 the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss published his classic essay “The Gift,” which argued that contrary to the textbook account of primitive man merrily trading beaver pelts for wampum, no society was ever based on barter. The dominant practice for thousands of years was instead voluntary gift-giving, which created a binding sense of obligation between potentially hostile groups. To give a gift was not an act based on calculation, but on the refusal to calculate. In the societies Mauss studied most closely — the Maori of New Zealand, the Haida of the Pacific Northwest — people rejected the principles of economic self-interest in favor of arrangements where everyone was perpetually indebted to someone else.

“Perpetually indebted to someone else”… this sums up so much of what I love about my community life in Burlington, VT right now.  We have a critical mass of people who willingly have jumped into debt with each other… not monetary debt, rather favor debt.

I was raised to value making my contribution to others while taking great pains to avoid accepting the same from others.  So were lots of folks here.  But that’s a recipe for setting yourself apart, for isolation.  As my family has learned to accept favors from those around us, it’s made our contributions to others that much more meaningful and personal.

Now, through Front Porch Forum, MealTrain, our church, school, neighborhood and other means, we ask and offer favors daily from hundreds of friends, neighbors and acquaintances.  Each request works against isolation and lays down another thread in the web of community that supports our life.  This is a crucial asset… as much as our house, my job, the kids’ college savings.

My brother and his family are planning a holiday visit to see us in Vermont this month.  We could all jam into our house, but I know they would sleep better if we had more space for the two families.  Hotels are expensive and distant… B&Bs too.  So, I put the word out to neighbors and got several offers of empty houses that we could use on our block.  These neighbors are traveling out of state and are glad to share their home while they’re away.  We’ve done this a dozen times over the past few years… offering or asking for empty-house guest lodging.  Make that hundreds of times if we include other favors… meals, rides, tools, advice, kids stuff, labor, baby/pet sitting, on and on.

This is incredibly generous and trusting of all involved… but it’s also keeping each of us “perpetually indebted to our neighbors” in a way that makes our community stronger with each exchange.

You have made my life shine through Front Porch Forum.  I have met people, some of my own neighbors.  We have bought things, received free things, have new customers for our cord wood business.  Bless you all… this is so amazing.  My husband has lived here all his 56 years.  I have been here for 33 years.  We have ALL lost touch with each other.  Let the love shine!

Thanks Tammy!  The note above arrived via handwritten card in the P.O. Box, including a $25 contribution.  We’ve gotten hundreds of these testimonials… each one makes my day!