Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration!
Thomas Edison
This is part 3 of a serial post. (See the last post here.) I will continue to discuss the various events and projects we implement to try to help increase participation in the community.
What better way to get started than to walk around the neighborhood and talk to people? At the end of the neighborhood association meeting I proposed that we put together a neighborhood walkabout, to talk to neighbors about what neighborhood issues they cared about, and how the NA could be more relevant to them. Everyone there liked the idea, and I passed around a sign-up sheet scrawled on a piece of lined paper.
I wanted to involve other agencies and offices in the walkabout, for several reasons. First, I didn’t want to step on any toes by doing an event in a city supervisor’s district without inviting him. Second, I am still relatively new to this whole community outreach thing, and want to learn from them on events like this. Third, are involved with the communities already, and are usually interested in participating.
After some calls, I had confirmed attendance from the Sacramento department of neighborhood services, an officer from the community outreach and neighborhood watch program of Sac PD, and the Councilmember who represents the area. This lends important credibility, actually, because people take you a lot more seriously if they think you can actually do something to address their concerns.
I have done a couple of other walkabouts, as well as some door-to-door marketing, so I know a few things about how these sorts of things turn out:
- A small handful of motivated people can cover a lot of ground, reach a lot of people, and make the effort a success.
- A lot of people won’t be home.
- You need a flyer or some sort of literature to leave at each door (for people who aren’t home), and for people who are home, so they’ll have something to refer back to if they want more information later.
- If people are even slightly interested, add them to a sign-up list with phone, address, and email so you can follow up with them later. This is extremely important! Never rely on people contacting you, even if they are very interested.
On the day of the walkabout, I got a call from the councilmember – he wouldn’t be able to come. I had also been unable to reach the contact with the police department. Keep in mind that in events like this, it is difficult to know beforehand who will actually show up, especially for an activity like this.
In any case, the walkabout went well. We split up into four pairs and started walking. Many people we encountered were interested in knowing more about what was going on in the neighborhood, and many were interested in receiving more information.
Some interesting observations:
- Most people didn’t have many (or any) neighborhood issues they wanted to talk about. Many said they were pretty happy with the way things were, which surprised me, because neighborhood association meeting attendees have plenty of concerns, and are constantly trying to improve the neighborhood.
- A neighborhood member in my walking group tried approaching people by asking them if they were interested in getting involved in the neighborhood. In my experience this is a chancy approach, because many people will interpret this as a request for time, effort or money. My predictions were borne out; we got no contact information from anyone who was approached in this way, and I suggested the neighbor try a different approach.
- One woman had plenty of issues she was concerned about (abandoned houses, drug dealing, gang activity), but didn’t want to come to a NA meeting because she “didn’t want any trouble.” We did finally interest her in receiving a newsletter from the NA, but it concerns me that she feels there might be reprisals against her if she speaks up.
We’re still collating the information we collected, but there is no doubt that it has increased the list of neighbors the NA can contact. We’ll see if we can bring any of them out to the next meeting.
