How to do community building in a small community when people wanna see each other - but still be safe?
I live in a neighbourhood of a couple hundred families, as past of a larger village of maybe 3,000 people. It used to be a really happening place but the people that ran the two community-building organizations (Lions and a resident's group) have gotten much older and now limit themselves to just three "events" a year (spaghetti dinner, picnic with an old car show, and Christmas tree lighting - all cancelled this year of course). Now that many younger families are moving in as older residents sell off their long-held homes there is a pent-up demand from the families for us to do something more as a community but in a safe way (We are fortunate enough that we are mostly past the worst of the first wave of Covid and have not had local cases for a month - we only had ten or so in total, and our nearest city is almost Covid-free as well but we are all being careful as a community with nearly 100% masks and distancing etc)
So far we have had a pop-up craft show, organized to lobby for infrastructure repairs (to our local dam as the river water levels are too low), and started a brainstorming group. We are rural, and don't have a lot of support from our local government who focus their attention on a large suburban town within the township boundaries. We only have five businesses in our "downtown" (a restaurant, a pet food shop, a bank, a post office, and a variety shop); we don't have any of the traditional community "anchors" like police station, school, churches, major employers or library/cultural building. We are mapping our community assets, we have a moderated facebook group with about 2/3 of households on it, and are coming up with a business directory (lots of home businesses here) but what else can we do? We are a planning a massive street party with bands and bunting to celebrate the end of Covid, but want to keep people engaged until then. What are people thinking of doing for hallowe'en in their neighbourhoods (we may have a second wave at that point), what Covid-conscious activities have worked well in your smaller communities? |
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