Betterment and Praxis

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The community for cool things you've done out in the real world, or are doing in the real world!

Covers things like volunteer work, community gardens, political activism, organizing clubs and communities in your public circles, and all the information surrounding how to do that stuff. Also covers self-help and betterment, because to help your community it helps to help yourself!

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What are we doing to build community this holiday season? (self.betterment)

submitted 3 days ago by Wigglet to c/betterment

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With recessions and political hardship around the globe, this holiday season is feeling a bit rough for a lot of us. I've been thinking of ways we can try and make minor improvements on a microscale. Here are some of my thoughts and please share yours in the comments:

More casual no or low-cost gatherings. As it's summer in Aotearoa, we are doing weekly meet-ups in the local park for shared kai. It's bring what you can and shame free for those who forgot or couldn't afford to bring anything. We are also continuing our workshop events with free reusable gift wrap making and summer holidays sewing and crafts club.

On a more personal mission, this holidays I am starting a new calendar/journal to keep track of birthdays and likes/dislikes of the people around me so I can start my newest project, "Max happiness", where I try to maximise the happiness stats of everyone around me through flowers, baking, and produce from my garden. I plan to focus on growing favourite flowers or produce next year so I have casual low/no cost gifts and can show my appreciation with gifts that are meaningful and not a burden on our planet. I'll be starting with something a bit more achievable in the next 4 weeks with home baking for friends and neighbours.

For those who don't already have an established community, I recommend going to some mutual aid events for distributing food or resources into your community. You might also find shared spaces holiday events through your library, community garden, or community workshop. These are the sorts of places where community thrives and I'm sure you will find yourself right at home 🥰

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[–] LallyLuckFarm 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've been volunteering some more time at our local library, as well as attending a few of the board meetings recently - our interim director is a close friend who's done wonders with the community garden and we're pushing hard for her to be made the permanent director. I found out that their last story time for the kids in town only had two people reading for the kids, so I put my name in to help with their next one. I've also donated several envelopes of seeds to the seed library during seed harvests from our native perennials this past autumn. There's a possibility of a board position opening up and two of the librarians, along with family, have been pushing me to run for the spot.

We're also making plans for me to give several talks for the adult education evenings in the coming year; I did a few this past year and they'd like me to give those again as well as some additional ones on things like habitat building and pollinator support.

The fellow my wife and I have hired to remove some dying trees from right next to our house, met through working at the community garden this year, was also hired by a neighbor of ours to whom we referred him. They told me they're planning to emulate our woodland project by having his crew leave some slash piles for the local wildlife and using the wood chips to make some footpaths through their property so they can spend more time being a part of nature rather than apart from it. They're the first of our neighbors to adopt aspects of our forest management approach, but I'm very hopeful that it will snowball from here on out.

[–] Wigglet 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wow heaps of good work happening in your corner! The adult education evenings are such a great idea. Could you share more around what topics have been covered and what ones are the most popular?

[–] LallyLuckFarm 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks! My wife says I need to get out more but I just end up volunteering at the library anyway

This past year, I did talks about composting, biochar, and asexual plant propagation (cuttings and divisions). There's another person who did a talk about lichens and another about the biology of mushrooms, and a third person did a presentation about vermiculture, or worm-powered composting. The talk about lichens had the highest turnout, but my talk about composting needed additional time due to the q&a session at the end of the slideshow. There have been a few others that I don't recall off the top of my head, but we're inviting anyone passionate about a topic who's comfortable speaking in public to give one.

It might take some effort to get buy in from your library, but all it needs, really, is a projector and a wall, some chairs, and that first person to share their enthusiasm with whoever shows up to get the ball rolling

[–] Wigglet 5 points 3 days ago

Those all sound great! We have a local garden club that does similar talks but only the garden club members know about them. It's a pretty niche group but I think if we got them to do some talks at our hub they would be popular. We have a member with an old projector they are giving to us so hopefully we can start soon. We were going to book in a recycling and low-waste talk through an alternative recycling centre.