What we do
One evening a week, for about an hour, the same neighbors sit there. They eat if there is food. Each one says what they need. Each one says what they can give. By the end of the hour someone has a ride to the doctor, someone has help with a fence, and everyone knows a little more about who lives nearby.
That table is the heart of Neighbors Gathering. Everything else is there to help it happen.
A Table starts with six support-neighbors, the name for everyone who takes part, and grows to twelve. People come and go as life allows. Each person takes on a role, and each role can be held by two people, so anyone can step away without leaving a gap.
When a thirteenth person sits down, the group talks it over. Some Tables split in two. Some send a few people to start a new one on the next street.
The weekly hour is for the neighbors most committed to helping. The door stays open to everyone else: a family new to the block, someone who needs groceries this week, someone who only wants to lend a hand. The Table knows who to call and where to send them.
When something serious is coming, like a wildfire, a storm or a long outage, word travels neighbor to neighbor. Someone sees it. A checker the Table knows in person confirms it, and only then does it go one step further. Every warning carries one thing to do, and every warning ends with an all-clear.
After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, about three in every four people pulled from collapsed buildings were rescued by family and neighbors, not by emergency crews. Lanterns is built on that.
Neighbors Gathering is a nonprofit, now forming. A street's Tables get what they need to become a neighborhood nonprofit of their own: training, the six roles, the Lanterns codebook, help with the paperwork. Then each neighborhood runs itself. The first one is starting now.
Very little. The app holds guides anyone can read, a blank call card to print, and offers of help. Who lives alone, who needs what and who sits at which Table stay on paper and between people who know each other.
Sign up on the front page, and we'll tell you when the first Tables open their doors.
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