Politics & Government

10,000 Neighbors of Evanston Promotes Community Sustainability

A notice from the city of Evanston.

The City of Evanston and Citizen's Greener Evanston invite you to join 10,000 neighbors who are emphasizing the ‘us’ in sustainable. We hope you will actively participate, connect and share with others as we strive to have a healthy environmental and social impact on our local community.

OhSoWe is about the personal and neighborhood level things we can do to safely build bonds with our neighbors, save money, and increase our quality of life while making our neighborhoods better (and saving the Earth’s resources). OhSoWe is focused on helping us all re-discover the things we can do with our neighbors. OhSoWe can share a meal with a neighbor, OhSoWe can easily borrow the things from our neighbors, OhSoWe can organize a block party simply and easily.

Build bonds:
How often do you wish you knew more of your neighbors? Would it make your neighborhood safer or more enjoyable to live in? We have become a nation that doesn’t know their neighbors and we’d like to help change that.

Save money:
Do you buy things that you only use once or twice? Imagine an easy way to find things you need right in your neighborhood that you can easily borrow from your neighbors. Or maybe you are looking for help with a project around the house that one of your neighbors could possibly help with. In addition, we make it easy to team up with neighbors for yard maintenance, snow shoveling, beautification and other local services.
Increase your quality of life:
By building bonds with our neighbors and saving money, we can achieve a higher quality of life. If we feel more secure because we know our neighbors and we save money because we don’t have to purchase or store the stuff we don’t use often, we can live a less stressful existence and increase the quality of life. OhSoWe gives access to the things we need from time to time, without the burden of ownership.
Help save resources:
Guess what? When we build bonds, save money and increase the quality of life, we also do the earth some good. Remember the greenest thing we can buy is nothing at all. So if we can borrow a folding table for company coming over, or a power washer or a carpet cleaner instead of buying one, we save money and resources. Check out Story of Stuff.
What is a Neighborstead?
It is a group of neighbors getting together to form a block club, neighborhood association or a neighbor-based organization that is focused on improving their neighborhood. It generally includes local neighbors building bonds, saving money and improving their quality of life, while becoming more sustainable. A well-formed neighborstead will be resilient against outside forces and consistently increase neighbor self-reliance and interdependence.

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Common aspects of a neighborstead include:

  • A neighbor based organization with the purpose of bettering their local block or neighborhood.
  • Sharing of resources, including tools, services and skills.
  • Community gardens and other food production like personal gardens and distributed orchards.
  • Patronizing local businesses whenever possible.
  • Regular meetings such as block parties, neighbor meetings, or crime update meetings.
  • Neighbors who make an effort to have potluck or other organized dinners.
  • Could be associated with a religious group, but is not exclusive of other individuals.
  • Conduct neighbor coordinated events such as multi-neighbor garage sales, park or vacant lot clean up events and social movie nights.


You can take action by posting your shareables, participating in discussions and joining the groups already working on the broader community agenda for sustainability.


You can join any of the groups that interest you:
CGE Energy Efficiency: here
CGE Community Education: here
CGE Integrated Transportation: here
CGE Collaborative Community: here
CGE Renewable Energy: here
 

Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.


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