Your neighborhood is your home.
It’s your backyard.
It’s where you raise your family, where your kids go to school, where your nieces and nephews play on the playground…
It’s a vital component to every human’s life.
Your neighborhood is literally the physical space that encapsulates your community.
And as social creatures, community is vitally important to us.
Therefore, we all have a responsibility to contribute and to invest in making our neighborhood (and the community within it) a better place today than it was yesterday.
And in this post, you’re going to learn 7 small tips – things that you can do right now to make your neighborhood better than it’s ever been.
It matters!
Let’s dive into it.
Getting to know your neighbors is the very first step to helping make your neighborhood a better place.
As you start to get to know people and build positive relationships, you literally start creating community.
Don’t forget, the definition for the word ‘community’ is: a group of people who live in the same area (such as a city, town, or neighborhood); a group of people who have the same interests, religion, race, etc.
Once you start getting to know people, you can start to get more involved.
This could mean learning about your neighbors, taking stock of the state of the neighborhood, and becoming more aware of the common ‘happenings’ that go on.
Local events, charities, churches, volunteer organizations, initiatives – these are all potential good things that you could get directly involved with to help make your neighborhood a better, safer, more successful place.
If you see a neighbor struggling, offer a helping hand.
If you know that someone in your community is facing some kind of tragedy or difficulty, find a way to reach out for assistance.
This could mean making a donation, helping them to move some furniture, cooking them a meal, offering a ride – anything that could be helpful.
And of course, you don’t need to go crazy with this and spend time or money that you don’t have.
The goal is to just do what you can to make your neighborhood a better place.
If you see trash lying beside the road, take a moment to stop and pick it up.
Be careful with this. You don’t want to cut yourself with a piece of broken glass or jab yourself with something sharp.
Consider carrying some leather gloves and garbage bags with you, and stopping to clean things up when you get the time.
Once again, you don’t have to go crazy with this. Even just picking up a piece of discarded litter here and there really goes a long way toward helping.
Even peaceful neighborhoods can be dangerous.
And sometimes, these dangers occur in broad daylight.
Special Security Services, a professional security company based out of California, puts it like this:
“According to ADT, most burglaries occur between the hours of 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. when most people are at work. However, many criminals prefer the cover of darkness and will take the risk of someone being at home. In certain situations, the perp may even prefer you to be on site when they arrive.”
You can contribute to keeping your community safer by keeping a sharp eye out for potential dangers.
If you see something suspicious, don’t be afraid to alert the authorities.
It just may save someone from becoming the victim of a crime.
Life is nothing if not stressful.
But when it comes to contributing to making your neighborhood better, it’s good to remember that a little bit of kindness and thoughtfulness goes a long way.
If you can gain a reputation for being the person who’s always kind and thoughtful, more people will respect you, like you, and seek to give back with thoughtfulness of their own.
This can also inspire others to follow in your footsteps.
A more thoughtful neighborhood will always be a better neighborhood.
At the end of the day, respect can go a long way toward making any community a better place.
Learn to cultivate a healthy, thoughtful respect for others.
You don’t have to make any huge gestures to make this small adjustment.
This happens in small ways: like holding the door open for someone at the convenience store, being willing to lend a thoughtful hand when someone’s loading something into their car, being polite enough to ask people how their day is going, etc.
It’s just in general cultivating a spirit of goodwill and generosity, mixed with basic human respect and decency.
There you have it.
7 small ways that you can start improving your neighborhood today.
You’ve got this!
Now get out there and make it happen.