There are places in your physical and virtual neighbourhood designed to bring people together in good faith and spirit – to share resources, good times and kindness.
There are wonderful initiatives out there that are hard to find online. Here, I have started collating little gems that I have come across.
Do you know of any others not listed here?
For now, all this just lives in a simple Google Sheet (see how-to guide). Let’s see where it leads.
Note that there may be errors in this list. Let me know if anything needs corrected.
Are you aware of anyone else pulling together similar content? Let me know!
How to use the directory
Sorry, there’s no great mobile experience. If you open the Google Sheet in the appropriate app, you should be able to comment; filters and sorts might not work.
However, the Google Sheet works as intended on a computer as follows:
- You can use the embedded file above or open the Google Sheet in its own window.
- The Google Sheet is shared with
commentfunction enabled. So, if you’d like to make suggestions directly in the file, use the little speech bubble icon to insert comments as appropriate. If you are logged into a Google account, your comment won’t be anonymous. - There are pre-set filters for your convenience. Find the
viewsicon (looks like a stack of tables or calculators) to see what’s available. You can also set your own temporary filters by creating local views on your computer.
Listing criteria
- Since the main aim is to list hidden gems with low entry barrier for newcomers, preference is given to small-scale, locally acting groups and activities.
- This is not a place to advertise commercial services. However, if commercial organisations offer free or affordable activities in the spirit of a benevolent community and the common good, these will be considered for inclusion.
- One-off events are not admitted. Right now, there is simply not enough admin capacity to manage the turn-over and keep the list up-to-date. However, if an organisation frequently offers a variety of distinct activities, it will be considered for inclusion.
- Spiritual, religious, esoteric and outright political organisations or activities won’t be admitted unless I feel comfortable sharing these here because I or a trusted person has had sufficient personal experience with them. Generally, I steer clear of theistic religions and anything that seems to have a cult/sect or extremely polarised character. Exceptions may be made, if a reasonably known organisation puts on activities that are not used for member recruitment or teaching/preaching, such as a soup kitchen for the homeless that’s coordinated by a benign, constructive religious group.
These criteria may evolve as we go along.
Managing expectations
I’m not a techie, and it shows. For the time being, this is a personal after-hours project of mine. Hence, my resources are fairly limited. I welcome suggestions regarding listings, search criteria, usability etc. Unfortunately, I cannot commit to general deadlines for evaluation, feedback or implementation.
I’m not going to get into arguments about inclusion criteria or decisions. The intention of the directory is explained above and in a blog post. Nitpicking won’t get us anywhere.
Let’s call this an MVP.