Neighbors
help neighbors. Every day, they use their time and their gifts to strengthen
families and communities. Many, especially those living in under-resourced
communities, work hard to deal with the challenges of communities where
unemployment, violence, and drugs are taking their toll. In the face of these
obstacles, community residents look for the connections to vital resources that
will improve their odds of succeeding.
There
may be no better example of neighbor helping neighbor—volunteering—than the
time-honored American tradition of barn-raising. From the earliest days of our
country, neighbors would gather at a homestead and work together to build a
barn, often in a single day. Neighbors lent a hand when they became aware of
neighbors they could help. They took responsibility for one another. More than
barns were built in the process. True bonds of community spirit were forged.
You
might not think you’ve seen a good barn-raising lately, but they are happening
around you all the time. The tools have changed, and what is built may not
actually be a barn, but the spirit of volunteerism is alive and well in cities,
towns, and rural communities everywhere. We need to tap into that irrepressible
volunteer spirit to address some of the most entrenched challenges in America's
most challenged communities. You can provide a renewed sense of hope and the
means to build a better future for individuals and families based on
connections forged through common goals, mutual respect, responsibility, and
ownership. Provide the tools, and use people’s skills and talents to find
collective solutions to create family-supportive communities, networks, and
opportunities necessary to bring neighbors together.
The
good news is that volunteering is not only already present in under-resourced
communities, it is crucial to the lives of everyone in them. People may not be
building barns, but they are practicing tried-and-true barn-raising principles
that you can tap into and encourage. Some quick snapshots tell the story: A
neighbor guides children across a busy intersection on the way to school. A
young friend makes meals for an elderly woman confined to a wheelchair. A
next-door neighbor takes care of a single mom’s small children while she
attends night school. Neighbors are helping neighbors in communities
everywhere. The service that takes place in low-income communities, however, is
often informal, organic, not recognized as volunteering—even by those who do
it. The term we used for stepping in to take care of others in our community is
Neighboring.
Mainstream
volunteering, in which agencies swoop in to “rescue” residents, does not
recognize Neighboring. It does not capitalize on the good deeds already being
done in the community or use them to make lasting changes. And often members of
vulnerable communities don’t respond well to those efforts. That is why it is
imperative that organizations seeking to work in under-resourced 3 communities
see residents not merely as recipients but as equal partners and viable agents
of change. With this new understanding, organizations from grassroots to
national groups can empower communities, engage residents, and build the
capacity of residents to find creative solutions to local issues.
Points
of Light Institute and HandsOn Network have embraced Neighboring as a strategy
to strengthen families since 1996. Through Neighboring, natural
neighbor-to-neighbor helping that strengthens children, families, and
communities is encouraged and supported. This type of help does not replace the
assistance provided by traditional volunteers. Instead, Neighboring underscores
that help need not come from outside a community but can come from within.
The
goal is to inspire, equip, and mobilize more nonprofit organizations to see
their most challenged communities as places of promise—places where resident
skills, talents, and desires are seen as wealth on which to capitalize in order
to create sustained, lasting change.
Points of Light
Institute and HandsOn Network
