Starting a Hood

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 first thing to do is to drop round letters to your neighbours houses inviting them to get involved.

We have a draft letter which has been used with success in plenty of communities so far. The draft letter is available at the bottom of this page. 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 a 5 minute walk of your house. Yes, that can be hundreds of houses, but it really doesn't take that long.

Once you feel like you've got enough people joined up to get started, you should organise a meeting or a social event to bring everyone together. It's nice to 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 get together, add it as an event on the website. 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.

Most of the work involved in starting a Sharehood community 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. More ideas for social events.

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.

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, Melbourne, and they 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 a few communities around Australia and overseas. The site provides 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, would 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 includes 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 join up or respond, I'll organise a get together so we can all chat about it.

Thanks,

Your name