As community makers, we believe each community possesses its own unique energy and desires based on different demographics, geography, and history. How can we come together as a group to harness this energy to bring positive change to our neighbourhoods? Speaking with practitioners from Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand, our team has distilled some tips that the practitioners have shared from their decades of experience in communities:
Celebrate the inner strength of gaaifongs and the neighbourhood
Dr Fan Ning shared that at the Sai Ying Pun Healthy Neighbourhood Kitchen, housewives gain a sense of purpose by sharing healthy cooking tips with fellow users at the Kitchen. By breaking away from the usual beneficiary-giver dichotomy, we can then leverage Gaaifong’s potential as community contributors and use their skills and time to fill the unmet social gaps. This is critical for sustainability of place-based projects, as Yamazaki-san shared how he/Studio-L would always examine whether the community has truly discovered its own strengths before deciding to transition out of a neighbourhood.
Make spaces multifunctional
Studio-L set up a cafe that functions as a childcare space for children to hangout after school while retirees who frequent at the cafe would help take care of the kids before their parents pick them up, so that the parents can save the time for the back-and-forth between work and school. Similarly, Rolling Books’ founder James Chong highlights how his bookstore has become a de facto community space. Since books are such an open medium, the bookstore is able to hold sharings on diverse topics, and attract people from all walks of life. What communities require are opportunities to create meaningful encounters and regular interactions between people from different social groups - be it across ages, families, financial status!
Incorporate a place-based lens to partnership and development
From Tung Chung to Tai O, Hong Kong has shown that businesses can leverage their business network and human resources at neighbourhoods that they have a heavy presence in to forge closer ties with the local community. Learning from Thailand’s experience, different communities can be more understanding of challenges others face when residents residing near the upper and lower streams of a river affected by a dam project were asked to come together for dialogues. Putting a place-based lens to what we do, therefore, enables us to re-examine what resources can be leveraged for impact and articulate better on opportunities and impact we bring to neighbourhoods.
Build cross-sector partnerships to accelerate social change (and changes can start small)
What unites all practitioners from Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand is the openness to partner with peers from different sectors and backgrounds. Take Community Living Rooms as an example, while the Hong Kong Government has acted as the facilitator, without landlords and nonprofit operators’ support to experiment, the expanded living spaces would have never been born. Support can mean different ways as well: donating a coffee machine could mean opportunities to upskill previously unemployed women to unlock future opportunities as part-time baristas; referring clients to co-fund an initiative could mean unlocking new partnerships; introducing new technologies to public agencies could mean a 40 percent improvement in indoor air quality for residents living in subdivided units. Changes do not have to be about planning a whole new programme as an organization - it starts from simply reaching out to a new ally!
Embracing unusual partnerships is the only way forward. From Hong Kong, Tokyo to Bangkok, we share our optimism for communities to realize their potential as a springboard for positive social change. While we each develop tailored approaches to suit our different needs and visions, there is still much to learn from one another as we mirror our journeys in community making!
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