I've long been interested in how people in a neighbourhood build links with each other. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, neighbours don't build very strong links. I think neighbourhood links, neighbourhood spirit is so very important.
I've spent the last month or so developing and creating a neighbourhood newsletter for Lower Sahali. I have also created a companion web site and a companion online residents only online forum. I've been inspired by efforts like Front Porch Forum, whose founder Michael Wood Lewis I was honoured to meet a couple of years ago at Personal Democracy Forum conference.
The inaugural issue of the Lower Sahali Bulletin is coming out next week, mailed to 1154 residences. I am proud of getting this off the ground. And I really hope the Bulletin will be thrive as a valuable resource. Here is how I describe my initial goals in the sponsorship sheet:
The Lower Sahali Bulletin is a new newsletter for the lower Sahali neighbourhood. The overall goals of the newsletter are to help build stronger community links in lower Sahali, to provide really useful information to residents, and to offer neighbourhood businesses the opportunity to build stronger relationships with nearby residents.
The newsletter is currently slated to come out twice a month, and will contain important and useful information for lower Sahali residents. Features will include information on neighbourhood events and amenities such as parks, upcoming road work and rezonings, commentary on important issues, a neighbour to neighbour free classifieds section, updates on nearby local businesses, home improvement tips, and much much more.
I have had pretty good response from neighbourhood businesses and residents so far. This is probably a model that could be replicated in other areas of the city. Would love to talk to anybody interested and share my experiences thus far.
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