With recessions and political hardship around the globe, this holiday season is feeling a bit rough for a lot of us. I’ve been thinking of ways we can try and make minor improvements on a microscale. Here are some of my thoughts and please share yours in the comments:
More casual no or low-cost gatherings. As it’s summer in Aotearoa, we are doing weekly meet-ups in the local park for shared kai. It’s bring what you can and shame free for those who forgot or couldn’t afford to bring anything. We are also continuing our workshop events with free reusable gift wrap making and summer holidays sewing and crafts club.
On a more personal mission, this holidays I am starting a new calendar/journal to keep track of birthdays and likes/dislikes of the people around me so I can start my newest project, “Max happiness”, where I try to maximise the happiness stats of everyone around me through flowers, baking, and produce from my garden. I plan to focus on growing favourite flowers or produce next year so I have casual low/no cost gifts and can show my appreciation with gifts that are meaningful and not a burden on our planet. I’ll be starting with something a bit more achievable in the next 4 weeks with home baking for friends and neighbours.
For those who don’t already have an established community, I recommend going to some mutual aid events for distributing food or resources into your community. You might also find shared spaces holiday events through your library, community garden, or community workshop. These are the sorts of places where community thrives and I’m sure you will find yourself right at home 🥰
Thanks! My wife says I need to get out more but I just end up volunteering at the library anyway
This past year, I did talks about composting, biochar, and asexual plant propagation (cuttings and divisions). There’s another person who did a talk about lichens and another about the biology of mushrooms, and a third person did a presentation about vermiculture, or worm-powered composting. The talk about lichens had the highest turnout, but my talk about composting needed additional time due to the q&a session at the end of the slideshow. There have been a few others that I don’t recall off the top of my head, but we’re inviting anyone passionate about a topic who’s comfortable speaking in public to give one.
It might take some effort to get buy in from your library, but all it needs, really, is a projector and a wall, some chairs, and that first person to share their enthusiasm with whoever shows up to get the ball rolling
Those all sound great! We have a local garden club that does similar talks but only the garden club members know about them. It’s a pretty niche group but I think if we got them to do some talks at our hub they would be popular. We have a member with an old projector they are giving to us so hopefully we can start soon. We were going to book in a recycling and low-waste talk through an alternative recycling centre.