Letterboxing

Once you've joined the site (join here if you haven't already) you may or may not find that you have neighbours who have also joined with whom you can start a community. If you would like to get more people involved, the best way to do that is to drop round letters to your neighbours houses inviting them to get involved. This is our draft letter in word, it is also shown at the bottom of this page.

The Initial Letter
If you would like to create a Sharehood community in your area, you can modify our draft letter below (just change the bold bits and feel free to change whatever else you want), or write your own, and drop it round to all of the houses within 400 metres of your house. Alternatively you could knock on doors and talk to people about the idea.

So far, response rates to the initial letter have varied from 3% to 20%. Try not to be dismayed if you end up with very few responses, the community will grow slowly. Many people seem to receive the initial letter and put it on their fridge, meaning to reply to it, but never getting around to it. If you meet people through other neighbours or just on the street, talk to them about it and they'll probably be excited about getting involved. Also you can always try doorknocking or advertising your community events with posters or further letter drops.

Your First Meeting
This can be as formal or as informal (eg. a picnic or bbq) as you like. It would probably be nice to at least do a round of introductions, with people talking about what they have to offer or what interests them most about getting involved. If you wanted to, you could also discuss starting various projects, like a fruit and vegie box co-op, though it could be best to wait until later for anything big. Its also a good idea to find out what people would like to do together and collectively organise another social event at the end of this meeting.

To let everyone know about the meeting, you just need to login, then click on 'Add an event' under 'My Pages' on the right of the screen, and fill in the form. Email notifications of the latest content on the site are sent out every three days, so everyone will be notified of the meeting within three days of you posting it.

Ongoing Social Events
Most of the work in a project like this is around people getting to know each other and that means organising social events like picnics, garage sales, bbqs, garden working bees and so on. The easiest event to organise is a picnic, all that is necessary is to post the event on the site and then show up on the day with food.

Anyone can post an event on the site, so this is something that you should eventually be able to share with your neighbours as they become more involved in the community. Initially though, it will probably be up to you to make events happen, and unless they do, you'll probably find that people won't ask to borrow things or offer favours, since they still won't know their neighbours.

Onwards to the Draft Letter!
Change anything bold, and anything else you want, or write your own..

Dear Neighbour,

I'm interested in setting up a local community that shares the resources we have. The things I'm thinking of include sewing machines, tools, wheelbarrows, washing machines, wireless internet, cars (carpooling or car sharing) and probably a million other resources that will come up as we go. Perhaps we could set up a fruit and veggie box co-op in order to bulk buy and reduce costs. We could organise co-ordinated garage sales between three or four streets, or “really really free markets” where we offer everything we don't want anymore for free and grab anything we do want. We could co-ordinate child-minding between families. We could put on garden working bee days in our respective gardens.

We'd have a localised distribution system for our skills and our produce. If you wanted to share or trade your homebrew, your artworks, the sprouts you grow, your garden produce, your homemade jam or anything else you make, you'd have a little local community to distribute to. If you wanted to share your skills, whether they be in accounting, gardening, building websites, bicycle or car fixing, essay editing, handiwork or anything else, you'd have a group of people within five minutes walking distance who want what you can offer. It'd be amazing to be able to borrow a circular saw for a day rather than buy one, or to get some accounting advice from a neighbour rather than pay for it. That kind of sharing is easier on our purse strings, is better for the environment, and will give us a feeling of community. Of course, you'd be welcome to share some things and not others, or borrow a lawn mower, but not buy a fruit and veggie box, and so on. It would be totally up to you...

Living in the city can be so anti-social; it would be nice to have a reason to know our neighbours. In 2008, a similar community was set up in Northcote, which is going really well. They've started a website at www.thesharehood.org, that we could use to contact each other. Since then, the Sharehood has grown to several suburbs throughout Melbourne and even one in the USA. There would be forums, an events calendar, a photo gallery and most importantly, each house could put up a listing of what they have to offer, what they are interested in, information about themselves, and their contact details.

Only your neighbours, will be able to view or search these profiles and you can put up as many or as few details as you choose. When you join the site you will have to agree to the Terms of Agreement (drafted by a lawyer from the first group) which stipulates conditions for interacting with each other and borrowing goods and so on. The website also incorporates a trading system (www.thesharehood.org/tradingsystem for more info) so you can either share freely or pay each other in local currency.

I've distributed this letter to all the houses on whichever streets/blocks. If you're interested in getting involved, please respond by email to email address, call me on phone number, or go ahead and just create yourself an account on the site - www.thesharehood.org. Also, if you like the general idea, but you have concerns about privacy or anything else, please respond anyway, and we may be able to sort it out. If enough people respond, I'll organise a get together so we can all chat about it.

Thanks,

 
Your name