As I wrote on Oct. 31 after the kids were de-costumed and put to bed, Halloween was wonderful in our neighborhood this year… a contender for “best community day of the year”… right up there with the July street-wide yard sale and block party (party was rained out this year).
Kevin Harris caught the idea:
Here’s a curious little piece by Robert Vandervelde in the Globe and Mail raking over changes in the social experience of Hallowe’en.
It’s called ‘The neighbourhood or the mall?’ with the writer reflecting a bit glumly on the decline in the number of kids in his neighbourhood who come to the door to scrounge, sorry, earn candy.
Last year he claims that Hallowe’en “gave me a chance to feel a part of my new neighbourhood. After going months without introducing myself to some of my neighbours, I could instead demonstrate my generous spirit through liberal distribution of candy to their children.”
The turnout was poor. Apparently the kids took the soft option, missing out on the notion of scariness in the dark and getting their pickings at the mall.
I, however, lament that our kids are off the streets. Will they still skirt the dark recesses of their minds by taking candy from a Gap cashier? Will they experience the same community experience when Halloween treats are given to attract consumers instead of out of a sense of neighbourly generosity?
It can’t be the same – the fear and magic you feel when the wind blows through the trees on a dark night can’t be recreated in a mall. The wild excitement of Halloween night seems tamed when you walk down a mall looking for corporate handouts.
Thanks to David Sillito for the link.
Today Front Porch Forum launched an online forum open only to FPF Neighborhood Volunteers in Chittenden County, Vermont, USA. Volunteers can trade tips for recruiting residents to join their neighborhood forums, as well as share fodder for quality local messages. If you live in the Burlington area, sign up for your forum today, then log onto the website and edit your account page to join the 150+ community organizers who are participating. Cheers!
So many wonderful success stories across the country of people coming together to build community. It happens all the time. In fact, the Bowling Alone people published Better Together: Restoring the American Community in 2003.
Front Porch Forum is our attempt to reverse these trends toward isolation. Front Porch Forum’s mission is to help neighbors connect and foster community within their neighborhood.
Social Capital, Inc. is another example. SCI’s mission is to “strengthen communities by connecting diverse individuals and organizations through civic engagement initiatives.”
Several reports in the media over the past 5-10 years about the decline of social capital in America… decay of community, loss of civic involvement and civility.
Robert D. Putnam made a splash with Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). In it, he boiled down large sets of data to such sound bites as:
Declining Social Capital Trends over the last 25 years:
-Attending Club Meetings: Down 58%
-Family dinners: Down 33%
-Having friends over: Down 45%
Surprising Facts:
-Joining one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year.
-Ten minutes of commuting reduces social capital by 10%.
The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America continues this work at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Another compelling study reported that the percentage of Americans with no one in which to confide soared from 10% in 1985 to 25% in 2004. And 25% of U.S. households have only one person in them, vs. 10% in 1950. Isolation appears to be increasing.
Step up onto our Front Porch and have a seat. This blog is created today to explore building healthy, vital community within neighborhoods. I’ve always been an organizer at heart, whether it was rounding up buddies for a game of kickball as a kid or running a campaign to convince my university to start buying recycled-content paper.
Earlier this year, my wife, Valerie, and I launched Front Porch Forum. This Burlington, Vermont-based service provides email forums for neighborhoods. We aim to help neighbors connect with each other in a way that fosters community.
If you live in Chittenden County, Vermont, please check out our site and sign up for your neighborhood’s forum… it’s already set up and underway. More than 2,000 households joined in the first two months of our beta period… a surprisingly fast start for a small metro-area. Word has spread mostly person to person, as one neighbor tells another. Those outside of Chittenden County can go to the site and join our wait list. We anticipate spreading beyond our intial area in 2007.
In this blog, I hope to explore some of the societal trends that pushed us to start Front Porch Forum. Reports of increasing isolation for individual Americans, lessening civic involvement, and decaying social capital in many places add up to a compelling case for fostering community within neighborhoods.
I anticipate looking at various attempts to improve the community feel of neighborhoods, including results from Front Porch Forum.
Comments are encouraged!
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