The new Missouri Good Neighbor Week Ambassador Program is for people who believe stronger communities begin with stronger relationships between neighbors. When you register as an Ambassador , you'll gain access to our new online Ambassador Portal , designed to make it quick and easy to report your acts of neighboring throughout the year and help us tell the story of neighboring across Missouri. Ambassador Benefits As a Missouri Good Neighbor Week Ambassador, you'll receive: Easy year-round reporting through our new Ambassador Portal. Free access to neighborhood training videos with practical ideas for building connection, belonging and trust where you live. Early notice of special events and opportunities happening across Missouri. Access to special Ambassador events and opportunities throughout the year. The opportunity to be part of a growing statewide movement making neighboring visible, celebrated and contagious. What We Ask of Ambassadors Being an Ambassador is simp...

  On September 3, something special is going to happen in my Neighboring 101 class. Marc Dunkelman, author of The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community , will join us as a guest on this Zoom link . And I’ve decided that this shouldn’t be an ordinary class session.  I’m opening the class to others who want to come, listen, ask questions, and wrestle with a question that I believe is becoming increasingly important:  What does it take to be a good neighbor in America today? I first encountered Marc’s work in 2018 while reading The Vanishing Neighbor , and I was struck by how closely his argument connected with something I have been thinking. Marc writes about something we have all experienced: the disappearance of the neighbor. Not necessarily the physical disappearance of the people who live next door. They are still there.  It is the relationship that is disappearing. We can know hundreds (or thousands) of people through our phones and social...

For most of our lives, many of us have heard some version of the same warning: Don't talk to strangers. There are certainly situations where caution is wise. But somewhere along the way, that childhood safety lesson may have become an adult social habit. We stand beside strangers in grocery store lines without speaking. We walk past people on sidewalks while looking at our phones. We sit near the same people at coffee shops, parks, sporting events and community gatherings without ever introducing ourselves. A campaign in Jefferson County, Colorado, is challenging that habit with a wonderfully simple message: Talk to strangers. The JeffCo Talk to Strangers campaign is built around the idea that stronger communities can begin with something as small as saying hello.  Its slogan captures the idea beautifully: “A small hello today. A stronger Jeffco tomorrow.” The Hardest Hello Is the First One The campaign doesn't ask residents to organize a festival, join a committee or launch a...

  What if one of the keys to a thriving rural community is not found at home or at work—but in the places in between? Coffee shops. Libraries. Parks. Local stores. Community centers. Farmers markets. Restaurants. Public squares. These are often called “Third Places” —the informal gathering spaces outside our homes (our first place) and workplaces (our second place) where people encounter one another, have conversations, build relationships, and develop a sense of belonging. For rural communities especially, these places can be much more than amenities. They can become essential pieces of a community's social infrastructure. That idea will be the focus of the upcoming Connecting Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC) Exchange Quarterly Webinar , scheduled for Friday, August 28, from 1:30–2:30 p.m. Central Time via Zoom . But you have to register! From a Storefront to a Gathering Place One of the featured guests will be Stephanie Campbell-Yount , owner of Haven in Maryville, Missouri . Ca...

  We often talk about neighboring as something we do for other people. Take cookies to the new family down the street. Check on the older adult living alone. Help someone carry groceries. Invite a neighbor over for coffee. Stop long enough to have a conversation instead of simply waving as we drive past. But what if these simple acts aren't just good for our neighbors? What if neighboring is also good for us? An article in RELEVANT Magazine, "Science: Loving Your Neighbor Is Literally Good for Your Brain," highlights a growing body of research showing that kindness and generosity can produce measurable benefits for our brains, bodies and relationships. The implications for how we think about neighboring are significant. Kindness Changes the Giver One of the most interesting studies highlighted in the article compared three approaches intended to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety: enjoyable activities, cognitive reappraisal—challenging negative thoughts—and intent...