When I was a teenager, I used to volunteer for the local library. It was a nice way to spend some time, discuss with the regulars about their latest readings, and feel useful to the local community.
What are your experiences?
I’m involved in our local community garden. We have just completed expanding our compositing facility and have a couple of hundred households households using it. The amount of food waste that no longer gets sent to a landfill is pretty gratifying and we produce huge amount of ridiculously rich compost. All from an inner city location in a city of 2M+ people.
Personally not that much apart from attending local gov meetings, kinda interesting to see what’s going on in the area, as well as grants available for local organizations etc.
I also try to get down to my local makerspace at least once a week, the winter is making that a bit challenging though since it’s a 40 min cycle in freezing temperatures. My cycle lights also need charging more frequently because of the cold… Can’t wait for summer to come back
In addition to the “real” local government, my city has a system of community-run boards that give recommendations on things like zoning variances and pending legislation. I’ve been involved with that for over a decade, and often represent my community serving on stakeholder advisory committees for transportation projects.
It’s not much but I attend the Farmer’s Market as much as I can, and I’ve become familiar with a lot of people there. It’s nice, being recognized and recognizing others in my community.
I try to be as involved with the world as I can, but oddly my experiences mostly involve the opposite. For example, I once asked if, hypothetically, I could volunteer at the library, and they said that, supposing this was someone’s mindset, they don’t accept volunteers, only paid workers. Not that they are unique, even after moving to a new community. Made a recent “collab” all the more genuine (“just do stuff, don’t wait for an invitation” as what many would say).
