We received some good press in Sunday’s Santa Cruz Sentinel. Unfortunately they didn’t make the the terrific article by  Joel Isaacson available online. We’d also like to point out that while the article focused on Barbara and Amie, this project is fueled by a wonderful, dedicated committee: Capitola City Council Member Dennis Norton, Patti Bond, Molly Ording, Linda Hanson, Wendy Ballen and Karl Forest. It truly takes a village. We invite anyone else interested in this idea to join us. Contact capitolacalltoservice@gmail.com

(Reprinted from Santa Cruz Sentinel, EXTRA, Sunday, March 8, 2009)

CRAIGSLIST FOR SMALL KINDNESSES

Capitola Women On Fire With Obama’s Call To Service

By Joel Isaacson

Amie Forest and Barbara Goron are more than inspired by the Obama’s call to service- they’re onfire – and when these two Capitola activists team up, things happen.

Like when they get a candidate elected to the City Council.  Or when they helped write an Obama anthem, then taught 200 people to sing it in three part harmony, filmed and recorded it and put it on You Tube.

Their current project includes a grassroots community assistance network, utilizing the latest Internet social-networking tools.  Think of Craigslist for small kindnesses.  “These are tough times and people lead busy lives,” Forest said.  “There are lots of people who would love to volunteer their time, but they can’t take on a regular, on-going, open-ended commitment.

But  maybe they have a free hour now and then,” Gorson adds.  “They could go online and, for example, find someone with a broken leg who needs her dog walked.  Just eliminate the feeling of obligation that keeps people from serving, and they’ll do what they can, when they can.”

Forest says that genius of the Obama campaign was to ask less from people, thereby allowing more people to give.

“Community” is the focus of the project:  enriching,  strengthening   and expanding it.  Not just with high-tech tools but with block parties and salons.  Gorson and Forest believe that Capitola is the perfect place to try something like this out because it’s not too big, it’s cohesive and there’s plenty of community and neighborhood pride.  They feel that the iconic Capitola businesses like the Capitola Book Café and others are community institutions that deserve community support.  They envision holding salons at Capitola cafes and “Dine Out in Capitola” evenings to help local restaurants.

Yes, they know things can go wrong:  what if there are offensive postings on the Web site, what if some people don’t have computers and what if nobody’s interested?

“We’ll deal with it, that’s all,” Gorson  said.  “We’ll try different things until we get it right.  This is all an experiment:  we know it won’t be perfect, but we’re not going to let that stop us from going ahead.”

Capitola DOES care. On Saturday, February 28th 50 folks showed up at Jade Street Community Center to talk about community service. It was thoroughly inspiring and informative. There is such a need for this kind of connection in our community and all it takes is a little bit of organization. If you build it they will come.

We’re starting a movement. Neighbor reaching out to neighbor, community supporting its lifeblood, organizations seeding social change. It can be done and we have no doubt that the time is now. So here’s what needs to happen now…we need to just do it.

We’ve compiled a very long list of ideas that were discussed today. This is our starting point. In the next week we will be creating a video showing people exactly how to access the tools discussed to pull this off (craigslist.org, this blog and Cournalist.com). Our ultimate goal is to create a pilot program, with Capitola as our proof of concept, that we can share with communities nationwide. If you are so inclined please add comments to this post with your ideas.

Ideas Generated:

• Graffiti Response Team (this got a LOT of good response)
• SC Volunteer Center (Christine) has a model of graffiti removal we could use or tie into
• Beautify neighborhoods
• Clean up beach
• Gardening Team (for public and private property)
• Access for people (especially seniors) who may not use computers was a hot topic with lots of ideas, e.g. use bulletin boards,  volunteer to post and/or find help for someone who doesn’t use computer;  work with senior centers to provide access.
• Get more events to Capitola, e.g. Skateboard – Capitola Classic.   Have a skate event and vintage skate/surf fair. Sponsors are interested! Use craigslist to seek out and organize volunteers
• Neighborhood focus – e.g. 1 day a month or quarter, have people in specific neighborhoods get together to do a day of service (foodbank, etc)
• Coupon exchange or coupon club
• Use existing non profits to publicize Capitola Cares.   Give them flyers
• Get neighborhood teams to walk their neighborhoods with flyers and tell people about Capitola Cares
• Businesses can adopt a cause and encourage employees to participate
• Organize a 1st Friday event every month to get people to a village or to the Mall/41st St. business (restaurant, coffee house, bookstore…) for social event (added bonus: builds community!)
• St Joseph’s Church in Capitola is a good organization to collaborate with
• Talk w/ and collaborate with existing non profits
• Buy local (and remember locally owned businesses too).Get an article or column in Capitola Times/other local media each month talking about Capitola Cares.
• Provide a phone number to post help message
• Use the city recreation newsletter to get info out about Capitola Cares and possibly host a workshop thru parks and rec to get people involved and understanding service opportunities etc.
• Evelyn’s “All Equal” – get people/neighbors together to gather food, clothes, etc for homeless;  or stuffed animals for kids.
• Drive a child to school or mother to work
• Don’t forget residential care facilities (it’s not just people in houses and apartments) residents.   Stop by to talk with people or maybe take a walk
• New Brighton Middle School could likely use some help, contact school administration to discuss
• Have a one day free flea market periodically in Capitola.   Everybody brings their “castoffs” and Capitola residents can take whatever they want for free
• Share seedlings event in the Spring
• Remember to have social time (food, talk,etc) at events
• Native plant restorations
• Monthly community soup suppers.   Can be put on by neighborhoods or by restaurants
• Get info from Grey Bears about who might need help in Capitola
• Somewhere for teenagers to go?
• Block party to get to know neighbors and maybe raise some funding for a good cause too
• Do Yard work for people who can’t
• Crisis intervention (there is a huge need for this as people are falling into crisis in Capitola and don’t know how to access resources to help)
• Homework assistance – because of risk of minors getting involved, we could go thru the schools to hook into their programs
• Teen-elderly card game nights
• Donate “prizes” to local schools as incentives to students to participate in school contests (or maybe to participate in service)
• Why not include short term jobs; jobs for youth;  skills that you might sell (e.g. guitar lessons) or post need like having your windows cleaned  (Note:  we would need to have a discussion about criteria for Capitola Cares posting.   Are we okay with having money exchange hands?  Or should it be all volunteer?)
• Have community wide garage sale with each neighborhood donating proceeds to different non profits (donate all or a certain %;  neighborhoods compete)
• Non profits partner with restaurants (once a month?) and have an evening of drinks, appetizers and donations (food, blankets, supplies for animal services, etc)
• Get each neighborhood to volunteer together
• There are families that do not qualify for official assistance but need help.  We could work with Mid County Childrens Center (Cheryl Devlin) to collaborate
• Neighborhood meetings/gatherings:  potlucks to connect with neighbors; block parties;  neighborhoods could id an area to keep clean and organize a team to do it
• Post info on community bulletin boards:  sr ctr, library, city hall, village, etc
• Get the non profit people who attended this meeting to take this info back to their organizations
• Outreach to local non profits to see about collaborating opportunities, find out about people who need help that might not fit into the non profit area of service;  and to get the word out
• Know thy neighbor;  help thy neighbor; do it yourself;  back to basics (this one says it all!)

Please pass this link and any other communications we send on to your local friends and neighbors. If we can continue with viral on-line communication we can do this without spending a penny. There is such power in the tools available today, let’s use them to benefit this wonderful place we are so priviledged to be part of. Stay tuned for more information as we begin to organize our effort.

So it came down to answering these questions: How can we encourage participation and build community? What are the barriers that exist with what’s already in place? What tools can we use to accomplish our goal?

There are many segments of our community who are not yet engaged in service or involved in their community.   And there are others who would like to help, but don’t know where to start or how to find the best opportunity; and those who are not able to make long term commitments to volunteer work, but may have time and inclination to help out sporadically.

What we realized is that people are good hearted but overwhelmed. So, in the Obama tradition of asking for a little from a lot of people (his online micro-donation fundraising strategy ) we decided to come up with a way for people to give a little community service: micro-service. While there are many great organizations focused on providing needed services in our community, there is something missing — the one on one connection – neighbor to neighbor.   A caring and connected community can meet needs, such as helping a neighbor with a broken leg walk their dog, driving a disabled neighbor to the drug store, getting a group of people to clean up trash on the beach one Saturday afternoon, or organizing a “dine local” event to help out local businesses.

We need an easy way for neighbors to connect and help each other out.

We believe we can build on models for engagement and activism which already exist. Recent online political models to engage citizens have been (and continue to be) very successful.  The key is that a small commitment is asked of a lot of people.  We envision that if it were easy for a person to find (or create) a service opportunity and if it required only a one time or limited commitment (no strings attached), many more people would participate.   Think of this as micro-service, (similar to micro-loans).  We will ask everyone in our community to do a little bit of service.  Once they have done so, we believe that it is more likely that this person will help out again or perhaps ask for help in the future.   And with each act of service, community ties are strengthened and a caring community is built.

Craigslist.org already presents an efficient and successful means of providing information about volunteering in your community. People can either post a request for help or an offer to help, and announce and invite participation in community activities. Think of it as giving community members the ability to sample micro-service opportunities. And it is easy with minimal training or help needed to participate. Our plan is to train a whole community how to use this function of Craigslist.org. It’s a giant experiment and a call to action.

This is a grassroots, self organized, community moderated model.  We hope that this online service and the community activism it motivates will inspire other communities to call their residents to service.