(A version of this item - with live links - is available on
my blog at
<http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.f
inn.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/24/1909305.html>.)
Dear Colleagues,
In a fit of goofy idealism, I decided to combine my
enthusiasm for
PledgeBank and my concerns about building social capital in
the Boston
area.
This resulted in my posting the following pledge:
______
I will smile and say "hello" to strangers I
pass on the streets
in my neighborhood but only if 50 residents of Boston,
Massachusetts,
USA will too.
I'm an enthusiastic participant in the Boston
Foundation's
"What's Next?" seminar series. This is a
program that seeks to bring
together leaders of all ages to exchange insights and
expertise about
Greater Boston's challenges and opportunities. One goal of
the series
is to foster a diverse, active, and intergenerational
network of
leaders to lay the groundwork for sustained action on shared
civic
goals.
(For more information about the "What's
Next?" series, please see
the Boston Foundation's web site.)
One of the issues that comes up continually is our
concern about
Boston's future. Good people are moving away, or refusing
to consider
moving here, because they perceive Boston as a cold and
unwelcoming to
outsiders.
This is a complicated problem among many other
problems, and
there is no simple solution. However, I'm convinced that
this is not a
situation so dire that incremental change is impossible.
Therefore, I am making a pledge to get started by
smiling and
saying hello to strangers that I pass on the streets of my
neighborhood.
______
As of this writing, 43 individuals have gone online to sign
up for
this pledge. We received an unexpected boost from Adrienne
Samuels of
the Boston Globe, who wrote an article about the project
that was
published in this morning's edition. I'm not really
crazy about the
article's sub-heading ("Bostonians seen as cold
snobs") , but was
delighted that Adrienne put across the main point, which was
that
encouraging people to say hello to strangers in their
neighborhoods is
just one modest goal. We need to do much better at building
affordable housing and increasing economic opportunities in
Boston -
creating social capital by smiling in every day social
interactions is
not sufficient in itself. Still, it's a good start in
introducing the
idea of online pledges in our community.
Best regards from Deborah
Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
deborah_elizabeth_finn post.harvard.edu
http://blog.de
borah.elizabeth.finn.com
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