Unexpected ways of strengthening community contact – Page 3 – European Community Psychology Association

Stories of Corona everyday life

October 29, 2020May 14, 2020 by Cinzia Albanesi

After the lockdown in the course of the Corona Pandemic almost the whole public life in our small village has come to a standstill. The official community newsletter, which is delivered to every household on Thursday, became thinner and thinner as there was hardly anything to report except the regulation of the lockdown. That is why we started the series “Stories of Corona Everyday Life”.

For 8 weeks now we have been collecting stories about the changes in everyday life during the Corona crisis, the worries and fears, but also encouraging experiences.

Pictures by Markus Trinker (left), Henriette Biber (center), Luise Behringer (right).

A few extracts: A woman reports about her concerns when her husband was ill. When news came that he was negative, she looked after her orchard and saw a stump with new shoots: “That’s what spring looks like – old things fade away, new things grow.” My 85 year old neighbour tells how she lacks contact to other people, but many have offered help. The football player misses the sociability and weekly structure given by football. He’s constantly thinking about what he would normally doing right now. And a group of women has started sewing face masks almost in piecework.

We get very personal stories, which are also an expression of the overall social situation and uncertainty. However, every story contains not only uncertainty, loss or concern, it also contains new perspectives and positive experiences that encourage others. The citizens’ stories are now eagerly awaited. Last week, the community newsletter was delivered one day later on Friday. This has caused many to go to the mailbox again and again and to ask the neighbours if they already had the newsletter.

Story shared by Luise Behringer, Germany.

More info here or contact luise.behringer@ksh-m.de

Strengthening our sense of connection in the immediate locality

October 29, 2020May 9, 2020 by Cinzia Albanesi

The street I live on has 36 private houses set back from the road. We don’t see one another come and go, people have lived on this street for twenty or so years and only know their immediate neighbours. When the likelihood of a lock down threatened I made fliers and invited people to join a street support group. It gave everyone the chance to introduce themselves and suddenly the street became a hive of community chat and mutual support.

95% of the residents have joined a WhatsApp group and others use land line contact. We have collected shopping for one another, enjoyed sharing film footage of a fox in a garden one night, worked out whose cats are visiting each others’ gardens and made fabric face masks for neighbours. We are organised a sponsored walk through just giving to raise funds for a local company to provide child friendly visors for NHS staff. On this walk we will all walk the route of the street simultaneously maintaining our social distance.

It is a shame that it has taken something like this to be a valid excuse to cold-call neighbours. Many of our residents are elderly and socially isolated and making contact with people nearby has been a real bonus. It has also been a great reassurance to their family who would normally visit to know they have a whole street ready and willing to connect and support.

Story shared by Jill Simpson, United Kingdom.

More info contact jillsimpson81@hotmail.com

Do-It-Yourself Lowell

October 29, 2020May 8, 2020 by Cinzia Albanesi

Several years ago, a young couple moved to the mid-sized city of Lowell, Massachusetts. They became attracted to the city’s diversity and spirit, and soon wanted to give something back to their new community. But without money or special expertise, what could they do?

Lowell (Mass, USA), City of Lights Parade

After some thought, they hit upon the concept of “Do-It-Yourself Lowell.” Its goals were to generate ideas for community events and projects and work together on them. By so doing, they could also create lasting civic improvements, enhance civic engagement skills, and build diversity.

The concept itself was very simple. Any resident could submit a community idea, and other residents would vote for the best. The winning ideas would receive funding leads and guidance, technical assistance, and publicity for community volunteers to transform the idea into reality.

Do-It-Yourself Lowell soon caught on; it has received hundreds of community-building suggestions, many of which can be found on its website, and some of which have been put into practice. Some examples: a mobile bike repair truck, a traditional medicine festival, a children’s tea party, a Quarantine Café (following the coronavirus outbreak).

Story shared by Bill Berkowitz, USA.

To learn more, contact at www.diylowell.org

6 Feet at 6PM

October 29, 2020May 5, 2020 by Cinzia Albanesi

During the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, my own community near Boston, like a great many others, strongly encouraged residents to stay inside their homes. Not surprisingly, community members wanted to find ways to have visible contact with others, even if they couldn’t meet directly with them in person.

Some planners in town proposed an idea they called “6 Feet at 6PM.” Neighbors on a street were encouraged to come outside their homes at 6:00 every evening, to wave, greet each other, and talk while maintaining a distance of six feet or more. This would be a safe and healthy way to maintain social contact under new and challenging circumstances.

According to local reports, many streets in town adopted this idea, some of them quite enthusiastically. Residents clearly seemed to have a strong desire for personal social contact.

While it’s too early at this writing to know whether it will persist, the “6 Feet at 6PM” initiative is a good example of a creative response to a crisis situation. It satisfies a basic human need, it’s easy to do, it costs nothing, and it’s very adaptable to other community settings, perhaps including the reader’s own.

Story shared by Bill Berkowitz.

To learn more contact Kelly Lynema, Arlington (Massachusetts) Department of Planning and Community Development, at klynema@town.arlington.ma.us.

Leverett Connects: A community wide list serve becomes the hub for all things related to coronavirus in a small US town

October 29, 2020May 3, 2020 by Cinzia Albanesi

Leverett is a small rural town in Western Mass of 1700 people. Our local community building group, the Leverett Alliance, listening to community voices decided to launch a town wide list.serve. Until then the town had no way to connect, exchange info, etc.

In September we started to publicize by posting flyers, sitting at the dump and the Post Office. Within a few months we had 250 members. We then sent a postcard to every household showing how easy it was to sign up for free, and the number climbed. People used the list serve to ask for help offer help, etc.

Then corona virus hit the country and since then the number of folks engaged has grown (now over 425) and the exchanges are very moving. Making masks for each other, shopping for each other, going to the dump for each other, food delivery options, finding out when to shop at the stores, etc.

It has created a true sense of community and has addressed very concrete needs. Some have even started an “coyote howl” across the pond in the center of town to mimic some of the activity in Italy and elsewhere.

As one user observed: “Hi, everyone, I just picked up an absolutely delightful rainbow-striped mask from the Post Office Thank you, seamstresses and seamsters! Thanks, too, to the enlightened techies who set up Leverett Connects. Who could have known that it would become so crucial to so many of us? It is wonderful to live in this town.” (Annie Jones)

We have heard that list serves like this are working in urban neighborhoods as well.

Story shared by Tom Wolff, from Massachusetts, USA.

To learn more: tom@tomwolff.com

Announcements

Call for papers | Symposium on Community, Psychology and Climate Justice

This symposium focuses on psychology and climate justice through the lens of community. Selected papers will be invited to submit a chapter to an edited collection after the symposium. Please submit extended abstracts of no more than 800 words covering one more of the above topics. The closing date for abstract submissions is 30 March 2023.

Call for papers: Climate change and environmental activism

Special Issue Call for Papers, JSSE-Journal of Social Sciences Education Environmental activism about climate change has been at the core of social movements. Across the globe, activists engaged in demonstrations, organised strikes, occupied buildings of corporations and, more recently, performed targeted civil disobedience actions. Some of these activists are engaged in transnational organisations that share, not only slogans (‘there is no planet B’) and information, but also educate one another on the use of online and offline strategies. More notably than before, many of these movements involve and are led by children and young people, in a clear demonstration of their political agency – and their concerns about the future. While this raises important questions about the role of schools and education in this existential crisis, the complexity of the situation is enhanced by other factors. The actions of governments and politicians have been erratic. For some, climate change is still debatable, ideological and ‘fake news’. For others, promoting community resilience in the face of climate change is a new priority, but one that coexists with the maintenance of a carbon-based economy. As there are growing signs of the severe consequences of the rise in the planet’s warming, there are also signs of the lack of serious policy regarding climate change. Furthermore, it seems that the climate challenge is one of these new issues that drive political polarisation and structure the culture wars about the curriculum and the role of (socio-)scientific knowledge in school and society in general. On the other hand, the intensity of environmental injustice is immense and works across other layers of inequality: intergenerational, as many of these changes will dramatically affect future generations; geographical since the countries most troubled by climate change are not those who are contributing the most to global warming; colonialism, given the historical continuity of patterns of exploitation, displacement and extractivism; as well as the intersection with existing economic, gender, race and disability inequalities. This special issue welcomes papers that address climate change and environmental activism from this broad perspective, focusing on political, social and economic education, its policies, goals, institutions, practices and challenges. This includes discussions of the civic and political identities and experiences of climate change activists, but also on the political controversies and debates around climate change. It also welcomes papers that address how formal and non-formal education for climate change can play a role in generating relevant knowledge, dispositions and actions, or in creating community resilience towards climate change. How does engagement with climate change activism influence participants’ civic and political agency and empowerment?How are climate change controversies approached in educational settings and social and traditional media?In what ways does climate change anxiety interfere with individual and community resilience about climate change regarding forms of dealing with it in diverse educational contexts?In what forms are transnational and global activism taken up in educational contexts?What are the effects of climate change formal and non-formal education in participants and communities? How are the knowledge and rationalities that have so far been deemed relevant in socio-scientific education being challenged, contested and changed?Which transformative approaches to social science education are being further developed and how are these linked to the global education agenda setting, for example of UNESCO?How does environmental injustice intersect with other layers of inequality and how is this interplay addressed in education?How are minoritized groups and communities engaging in climate activism? How are links with capitalism, colonialism and globalisation explored in educational approaches to climate change? Deadline for manuscript submission: March 15, 2023. Editors: Maria Fernandes-Jesus, Andrea Szukala, Isabel Menezes. More info HERE.

Call for papers: Community Psychology in the face of the climate crisis: What contributions?

Special issue call for papers: PSICOLOGIA DI COMUNITA’ (Community Psychology Italian Journal) Community Psychology in the face of the climate crisis: What contributions? Climate change is long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns caused by chemical changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and in land use. Scientists agree not only on the reality of climate change, but also on the responsibility of human activities in determining it. Scientists also largely agree on the consequences: not only rising seas, declining biodiversity, extreme weather events, changes in agricultural productivity (e.g., IPCC Sixth Report), but also related impacts on migration, human health, conflicts related to resource scarcity, etc. This scenario makes it even more necessary to strive towards the goals of the 2030 Agenda and makes the interconnectedness earth and human experience and action even more evident. Fighting against climate change is itself a goal (SDG13) of the 2030 Agenda, but it is clearly linked to reducing inequalities (SDG10); organising safe, resilient and sustainable communities and cities (SDG11); implementing sustainable production and consumption patterns (SDG12); protecting the oceans and seas and protecting the terrestrial ecosystem (SDG14 and 15); promoting peaceful societies (SDG16); and building partnerships that promote the achievement of the goals themselves (SDG17). Achieving these goals will require addressing multiple challenges and capabilities. In particular, it is quite apparent that the negative impacts of the climate crisis on people’s lives in terms of well-being, decision-making, and disruption of individual, family, and whole community lives are increasingly important. While the climate crisis affects all of humanity, it does not affect all people in the same way. Indeed, it is evident that this crisis has exacerbated global inequalities between North and South and between classes and genders, making even more compelling the need for redistribution of power and climate justice, which is inseparable from social justice. There are many varied skills that derive from Psychology and are useful in addressing this crisis and its effects. This has resulted in recent years in the rise of a “Psychology of sustainability”, which, hopefully, will continue to gain increasing relevance and cross-connections with psychological and other disciplines. The goal of this Call for Paper is to elucidate specific contributions for understanding and intervention into the climate crisis that can be derived from community psychology. The perspective taken by community psychology (e.g. clinical and political, ecological, multilevel, action-oriented, multidisciplinary), the issues it addresses (e.g. resilience, coping, prevention, well-being, sense of community, participation, networking, power and empowerment), the justice-oriented values (e.g. social and climatic justice) may contribute a useful framework to face this crisis and offer intervention. Anyone interested in submitting a paper may send an abstract (max. 200 words) to the Guest Editor at angela.fedi@unito.it, by November 30, 2022. The deadline for submission of papers is January 30, 2023.