If you have an idea to improve your local area, don’t reinvent the wheel. Plenty of strong online communities bring people together in clever ways to swap, trade and collaborate. If you find that not many people are registered in your area yet, the sites can still help your community group get organised without having to worry about building the infrastructure.
A good tip for all these community sites is to take a little time to get to know the conventions of the site and if you’re not sure about anything, ask for help. If you’re not sure where to ask for help, ask here and we might just be able to find the answer for you.
Here are some sites to look at if you want to:
- clean the streets
- organise a street lunch
- offer or find land to grow fruit and vegetables (or help out others who would like to)
- give unwanted belongings away, or get something for free
- fix problems in your street
- caption those funny photos of your pets
- find and share recipes
- build a local history page (that people will find and read)
One final tip, don’t forget it’s always a good idea to start things off in the places where people are, rather than trying to drag them off to a new site they’re unfamiliar with. Facebook can be great for getting people to congregate round a simple idea.
If you know about other really useful sites to help organise in your community, please let us know.