Category Archives: Civic Engagement
New Feature: Share Postings with Neighboring FPFs
#BTV #VT – Starting today, Front Porch Forum members can select to share their postings with neighboring FPFs. Look for the check box on the NEW POSTING page at FrontPorchForum.com (login required).
National gathering of community foundations feature FPF
#VT – Front Porch Forum is one of the successful services being highlighted today at the Knight Foundation’s Media Learning Seminar in Miami. FPF is pleased and grateful to be included in this prestigious event.
“We don’t need another newspaper, we have Front Porch Forum”
#VT – How fortunate we are in Bristol to have Front Porch Forum at our disposal. I certainly hope that someone is recording all these postings using some media that is not ephemeral (imagine if the Constitution had been recorded on 8 track?) as future generations may be able to use current Front Porch Forum postings the way our generations use the old Bristol Heralds- a view into a time gone by.
I was talking with a good friend the other day who had been considering starting up another newspaper that would deal with only local issues, much like the last several efforts to do the same but which all met an early demise. We don’t need another newspaper- we have Front Porch Forum which meets all those needs.
I just hope that future generations can enjoy this as much as we do and that they will be able to look back to our time and try to understand the issues that confront us in the same way that we use old publications in our quest to understand the issues of earlier times, and as George Santayana observed, “Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Shared by Ted with his Bristol, Vermont, neighbors on their FPF today.
Monkton, Ferrisburgh, Enosburgh open Front Porch Forums
#VT – Welcome to the good people of Monkton, Ferrisburgh and Enosburgh to Front Porch Forum. Anyone living in these towns may now join their FPF at FrontPorchForum.com.
And a special thanks to the Monkton Community Coffeehouse, Enosburg Area Business Assn., Enosburgh Town School District, Town of Ferrisburgh, and others for sponsoring this expansion of FPF services. We now cover 90 Vermont towns. Here’s a map and complete list.
Social media — the new graffiti?
Graffiti was traditionally the only means love or hate-filled teenagers had of letting the world know about their passions.
Now, thanks to Twitter and Facebook, they can literally let the world know about it – and no-one will come along and remove it.
“Vandalising and spraying – the local council will just come and take it off,” says Kito, a youth worker of the Queen’s Crescent Youth Club. “They will wash it off. So you put it up, they wash it off, you put it up.
But if you put it up on your BlackBerry it’s yours, it’s your personal message and nobody bothers you.”
Vandalism is increasingly seen as a pointless activity. As one teenage girl at the Queen’s Crescent Youth Club put it: “If I get angry about something, I go on Facebook.”
Smartphones — new opiate of the masses?
Vandalism began to fall sharply in 2006/07 – about the same time as smartphone sales began to take off in the UK.
Research last year by Ofcom found 7% of teenagers spent less time socialising with friends since they got a smartphone.
Would it be too much of a stretch to suggest they also spend less time hanging around on street corners and vandalising things?
“There are so many things for kids now,” says Kito, a 30-year-old Camden youth worker. “Why waste their time vandalising when they could be on their BB [Blackberry] talking to girls or on YouTube putting up their music videos? They have got a lot of things to keep them occupied. They don’t need to be bored now.”
The average 11- to 14-year-old spends 13 hours a week playing computer games, increasingly on their smartphones, GameTrak figures show. If true, this would not leave a great deal of time for much else.
BYO Projects focuses on Vermont success story
#BTV #VT – BYO Projects is a collection of projects curated by BYO consulting staff and submitted by readers. They showcase projects that make the world a better place through creative problem solving, experience design, technology, and community engagement. Today, on MLK, Jr. Day, they focused on Front Porch Forum!
Front Porch Forum‘s mission is to “help neighbors connect and build communityby hosting regional networks of online neighborhood forums.”
Building community resiliency before natural disaster
#VT – Shared recently by Meg Allison, Moretown Elementary School librarian:
Moretown is a typical rural Vermont town, defined by her extraordinary landscape of hills and valleys, and peopled with caring, resilient, and proud people. When the rains of Tropical Storm Irene caused our rivers, the Mad River and the Winooski River, to rise and inundate our neighborhoods, when our village had to be evacuated, when our post office, town office, and elementary school filled with flood waters, when our bridges were compromised and roads washed away, we had one thing going for us that some other towns did not ““ a digital infrastructure and a citizenry who knew how to use digital tools to communicate, to organize, and ultimately, to continue our long-term recovery.
Moretown was the recipient of round two e-Vermont funding that established, among other things, Front Porch Forum, a robust digital network for our residents, digital workshops and training for our residents, computers and wifi access for our town library, and an invaluable partnership with Digital Wish, providing each of our 4th, 5th, and 6th graders and their teachers with netbooks and training for how to learn and teach with them.Without our own local news station, newspaper, or radio station, typical of so many rural Vermont towns, a platform such as Front Porch Forum proved to be vital when we needed it the most. Moretown only had Front Porch Forum for a few months and it was slowly growing. Town officials were embracing it and posting agendas for upcoming select board meetings, some neighbors told of yard sales and extra eggs from their hens to give away, but many weren’t sure of why we had it, or what its purpose was.That changed in the days and weeks immediately following Tropical Storm Irene.Within days, interest in Front Porch Forum exploded. Dozens and dozens of residents signed onto FPF as it became the number one way that town officials and neighbors communicated with one another. It became so important that minutes of our daily emergency response meetings posted onto FPF were printed and tacked to the Town Hall and other outlying areas of our town…
Connected neighbors to the rescue!
#BTV #VT – We have our loaner dog Toby back thanks to FPF and the the watchful eye of FPF’er Ryan. Thanks again Ryan. A much happier Christmas is on the way now.
We tried three things to find our missing dog: the manual posting of dozens of LOST DOG signs around town; implementing my wife’s substantial Facebook network; and a simple yet desperate posting on FPF. Front Porch Forum came through again! So grateful to have this. Thank you for this wonderful, effective community resource!
Need smoke detectors advice?
#VT – Pat asked her neighbors in Middlesex for tips this week. Today she shared this follow up…
Front Porch Forum sure is an effective way to get information. I got about 20 helpful responses to my question about smoke detectors. Thanks and happy holidays!
About Blog
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
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