the neighbor next door

This week, Matt and Adam are joined by friends, Justin Hancock and Rebecca Mitts. We are doing something we haven't done in a while, a podcast episode swap! Justin and Rebecca are the hosts of a podcast called Palsys With Palsies where they share profound ideas about important topics in an approachable and accessible way. Today, they share with us Episode 11 of their podcast called, "The Gaze & the Dance". 

"In this episode Justin talks about his experience with "the gaze," known in the disability community as being stared at by and interacting able bodied people who don't know how to inhabit the space with a person with a disability. He shares one the best experiences and some of his lousiest experiences with "the gaze." There is a social dance that happens whenever you meet someone different from yourself; so if you step on toes, don't keep stepping on their toes. Be curious, but not an a*****e."- summary from Palsys With Palsies podcast.

Find their other podcasts at:

Apple Podcasts: HERE

Google Podcasts: HERE

Simplecast: HERE

This week, Matt and Adam are joined by Kristopher Swanson for a new Neighboring Tip which is to strike up a conversation with your neighbor. For some people, this may be a very obvious tip. It is spring, people are out and about, it makes sense to strike up a conversation! For others that may think this is a harder tip to execute, be intentional about saying hello and being open to a conversation. If you can't remember your neighbors name, name the awkwardness and ask! And remember to write your neighbors name down for next time. Perhaps on a piece of paper OR a block map magnet that you can purchase at our store HERE.

To find out more about The Neighboring Movement, go to our website, www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week, Adam and Matt are joined on the podcast by Maddie Johnson. She is joining the Neighboring Movement team to be the new Good Neighbor Experiment coordinator! Listen in to meet Maddie and hear a little bit about her and why she is excited to join us!

Find out more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week Matt and Adam are joined by Dee Brooks, ABCD Asia Pacific Trainer and Facilitator for the Jeder Institute and ABCD Asia Pacific Network. She is a world-wide connector for Asset Based Community Development and we are thrilled to have her on the podcast!

Dee shares inspirational stories and ideas that will make you want to get up and go out to interact your neighbors- just get out and "let the the dog go." We are encouraged to turn what may be seen as a challenge into an opportunity for growth and development.

This week, Matt and Adam are joined by David Burton from Springfield, Missouri who works for the University of Missouri Extension in community development. David shares his experiences with neighboring, what caused him to begin advocating for neighboring, as well as the pilot program they launched in March and what lessons they are already learning from that.

To learn more about the neighboring movement, visit us at www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week we have a JOYFUL celebration of an episode because Matt and Adam are back on an actual front porch! We've got birdsong, we've got trains in the distance, we've got the creak of the porch swing AND we've got Adam and Matt doing what they do best- playing live music and talking about taking the time to enjoy the little things that mean the most to us as we come out of the season of Covid.

Editors note: I left this episode pretty raw! I want to invite you to take a minute and image yourself pulling up a chair onto Adam's porch to listen in on this conversation. I invite you to share in the laughter and joy of this episode!

You can find more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week, Adam and Matt are joined by John McKnight to discuss the six (possibly even seven) attributes of a culture of contribution, how these characteristics in a community could foster peace, and then continues with the roles that we play within our neighborhood.

The six attributes discussed: Cooperation, Hospitality, Generosity, Kindness, Accepting Fallibility, Forgiveness, (and the seventh, Spirituality.) 

• What would you do to make these manifest? 
• The people who love you, which of these attributes would they say YOU have?
• And look at your neighbors? What attributes do you see them living into? We want to hear your stories. 
• How do we tell these stories in our neighborhoods?

The roles that people perform in a community: Healers, Conscience, Artists, Conveners, Bridgers, Connectors, Voices, Visionaries, Executors, Tuck Pointers.  We would welcome your thoughts on this list. 

• Which of these do you feel like is a role that gives you joy? 
• Is there a role that you would add? 
• And think about your neighbors. Do you see them embodying a role listed here? If so, what does that look like? 
• Are there missing roles you would add to this list?

You can learn more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org

You can learn more about John McKnight HERE and a link for The Learnings of John McKnight can be found HERE.

In June of 2019, we sat down with Dr. Justin Moore, a physician and researcher, and discussed this fact: neighboring makes us healthier. Justin practices medicine in various community-oriented ways, and he also researches the impacts of social isolation and loneliness on physical health. In this powerful episode, Justin shares surprising statistics before giving enlightening advice on how we can all start neighboring for health!

This week, Matt and Adam are joined by 3 introverted neighbors! Catherine Johnson who works with us at the Neighboring Movement, Daniel Reffner who is a pastor at Aldersgate UMC in Wichita, and Carter Ellis who is a pastor in Kansas City share with us how they are able to be good neighbors as introverted personalities and what gifts introverts can bring to the table.

To learn more, visit our website at www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week, Adam and Matt are joined by Nathan Hansen who shares with us his experience of neighboring in an apartment complex. We love talking about neighboring through the art of storytelling and Nathan has some great ones this week!

As always, find out more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org.

This week, hosts Matt and Adam continue their discussion about the ReCycle process. (Part 1: The Act of Remembering aired on December 22, 2020.) In Part 2: Reveal, we move from the thinking and reflection portion of the process to the Action piece- Or to loosely quote Adam, just go out and try some *stuff* and see what happens!

Find out more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org

This week, Matt and Adam are joined by our very own, Kristopher Swanson who shares with us a new Neighboring Tip. Walk with your neighbor!

As Spring blooms, more folks are out and about in our neighborhoods. Invite a neighbor to walk with you; take in some sunshine! The great thing about this tip is that is for introverts and extroverts alike. You can fill the time with chit chat about the beautiful weather, how the neighbors' gardens are looking, etc. OR you don't have to talk at all. If you have a neighbor you are comfortable with, you could soak up the sun and just LISTEN. To the other person's story or if they are quiet too, just listen to the wind and birdsong. Grab a neighbor and walk!

To find more Neighboring Tips, go to www.NeighboringMovement.org

This week Adam and Matt are joined by Amy Notbohm from Arizona. Amy found the Neighboring Movement through some mutual friends and started listening to the podcast, then jumped onto a Community Call and we immediately fell in love with her energy and started including her in all the things so that she could begin sharing her knowledge with us!

In this episode, Amy references two books:

"Doughnut Economics" by Kate Raworth. You can find out more information about that book and "the doughnut" at https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/.

"Women in the Gift Economy" by Genevieve Vaughan. You can find more information about this book at http://www.gift-economy.com/womenand.html

As always, find out more about the Neighboring Movement at www.NeighboringMovement.org

Welcome to the 5th and final part of our Cormac Russell interview! For the past 4 weeks, hosts Matt and Adam have broken down an hour long conversation they had with Cormac Russell, the author of "Rekindling Democracy," a much sought-after international keynote speaker and Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organization in Europe. Listen in for the conclusion of this inspiring conversation. 

I really want to just have basically a transcript of everything Cormac says in this episode; there are so many profound, make you think, things packed into this short episode. But instead I will lead with this one quote and you will have to listen for the rest. "So if you want to breathe free, the starting point is to remember that the people who are most likely to enable that to happen, are you and your neighbors."- Cormac Russell

To learn more about the Neighboring Movement, go to www.neighboringmovement.org

To learn more about Cormac Russell, visit https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/ 

Welcome to Part 4 of 5 of our Cormac Russell interview! For the past 3 weeks, hosts Matt and Adam have broken down an hour long conversation they had with Cormac Russell, the author of "Rekindling Democracy," a much sought-after international keynote speaker and Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organization in Europe. We are down to our last 2 parts of the conversation and oh friends, we are still very much in the depths of this rich, chocolate peanut butter pie!

This week, Cormac starts out by talking a little about economics of institutions and the neighborhood economy.

"Lots of liberals would say, "well thank goodness we've got the public sector and we've got charities because they don't operate that way..." Well actually, they do. So the structure of the institution is essentially I'm going to take your need in whatever form it comes and I'm going to structure it in such a way that it can be commodified... Two thirds of all the monies that are intended to go to the people living in poverty, to put an end to poverty, don't go to people living in poverty in the US. They go to people who are servicing people who live in poverty who are not poor."

"Many of the big churches are exactly the same, where they're harvesting people's misery and turning it into money."

 Insert head explosion emoji here! Listen in to hear what Matt and Adam talk about in response to that band-aide rip!

To learn more about the Neighboring Movement, go to www.neighboringmovement.org

To learn more about Cormac Russell, visit https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/ 

Welcome to Part 3 of 5 of our Cormac Russell interview. Hosts Matt and Adam are joined by none other than Cormac Russell, the author of "Rekindling Democracy," a much sought-after international keynote speaker and Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organization in Europe.

To recap a bit, Cormac has been telling us about the 3 Lanes. The first lane is what communities can do for each other. The second lane is what citizen's can do WITH institutions, key word is "with." And the third lane is what institutions alone can do. And where we are now is we always tend to start in lane 3, without asking questions of lane 1 first.

This week, Cormac gives a couple of recent examples of lane one and how Covid has actually moved us back into lane one a bit.

To learn more about the Neighboring Movement, go to www.neighboringmovement.org

To learn more about Cormac Russell, visit https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/ 

Welcome to Part 2 of 5 of our Cormac Russell interview. Hosts Matt and Adam are joined by none other than Cormac Russell, the author of "Rekindling Democracy," a much sought-after international keynote speaker and Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organization in Europe.

This week, you'll hear Cormac discuss the world as it is, a heightening of a sense of individualism and then asking the question, where do we go from here? What does the work look like when we re-center democracy within the neighborhood?

"Now the question might be, what's the scale in which we can do that work? We know city is too big, we certainly know state is too big, region is too big, so what's the scale? We know family is too small, the individual, that is really not helpful... I think there is a third unit of change and that is the neighborhood."- Cormac Russell

To learn more about the Neighboring Movement, go to www.neighboringmovement.org

To learn more about Cormac Russell, visit https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/ 

This week, hosts Matt and Adam are joined by none other than Cormac Russell, the author of "Rekindling Democracy," a much sought-after international keynote speaker and Managing Director of Nurture Development, the leading Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) organization in Europe. There are so many golden eggs in this interview, you would think it was Easter already! 

To paraphrase Matt and Adam, this interview is so rich it's like a deep fried peanut butter pie, so we will break it down into 5 segments so that you can fully digest all of the great quotes and incite this interview has to offer. Here are few quotes from this week:

"...at times the function of the state is to create a dome of protection around associational life and if there is a predatory force that's doing the community down, I think it's quite helpful for them to be big, to fan out, but when there's a whole set of things like for example in a little while I'll go and have a meal with my family, I don't want the state governing how the salt gets passed."- Cormac Russell speaking on institutions and how proportionality and context matters.

"...recognize that democracy at whatever level or scale we think of it is something that has to be an embodied act, otherwise it's just a concept."- Cormac Russell

"...so the neighborhood is the primary unit of change in a democracy, so you think about it, what is the atomic element of molecular democracy?  It's the neighborhood."- Cormac Russell

To learn more about Cormac Russell, visit https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/ 

This week is Part 2 of a conversation that Adam and Matt had with the Mayor of Midland, Michigan, Maureen Donker, as well as Alysia Christy from the Cultural Awareness Coalition in Midland. They share their stories of what intentional neighboring is doing for their community. In Part 1 last week, we heard from Maureen and this week in Part 2, we hear from Alysia.

"How do we reach those people to support the narrative that "You belong," that "You have a place here," and that isn't going to happen just simply because of where they live or who their neighbors are but is going to come in the micro-moments that people experience their community through."- Alysia Christy

Matt and Adam are joined this week by the Mayor of Midland, Michigan, Maureen Donker, as well as Alysia Christy from the Cultural Awareness Coalition in Midland. They share their stories of what intentional neighboring is doing for their community. In Part 1, we hear from Mayor Donker and next week in Part 2, we will hear from Alysia.

"...if we are supposed to love our neighbor, we need to know who our neighbor is." And I thought, "Brilliant! How hard is that???""- Maureen Donker on how they got started.

"So we have deepened the conversation to where everyone could find a piece where they could fit in."- Maureen Donker on how the concept of getting involved with neighboring can be applied not only to church outreach but to schools and businesses, safety meetings, etc. How much safer is the community/school/business/church/etc when people know each other?