Like any event, things don’t always go according to plan. Our Neighborhood Action Day was no exception to that rule. August 1st rolled around and the Summer of Solution team had planned our neighborhood event to a T. Food donated, menu planned, volunteers briefed, materials printed and the agenda was down to 5 minute time slots- we were very thorough.
At 4:00 community members, traveling by foot, bike or car, started showing up; kids included there were about 25 people. The mayor was there, poised to shake community members’ hands as they signed in. By 4:30 people were out canvassing in their neighborhood, and by 5:30 they had returned, registration sheets filled with added participants in the Community Carbon Challenge. At that point neighbors sat down, burgers in hand and stated to talk about Job’s Addition— and that’s when things started going wonderfully awry.
You can plan out agendas and scripts- but what you can’t prep for are those small conversations that happen between a few people who have a shared vision. In the warm summer evening, neighbors talked and laughed about what they had in common- their kids, their garden. As conversations developed, I heard people speak about the joy of living in a “neighbor to neighbor” area and discuss the need for furthering that though grassroots action. Through these conversations those joys and needs will manifest themselves into plans of actions and solutions that are based, not out of a sense of duty or fear, but instead created from a place of hope and joy, inevitably leading to a shared sense of responsibility and faith in our ability create the future we want to see. As an organizer in a community like Corvallis I can no more plan these conversation than make it rain. All I can do is make the space for people to connect and realize the power of holding a shared vision.