I hope this is the appropriate community for this question, if there is a better community for this, I can post it there.
It's been a bit over a week and I've had time to accept what has happened and what will happen as a result of America's recent decision. Even though I am from Canada, the news has many direct and indirect consequences which still has me concerned for the near future.
I feel that right now is the time for me to start and build a local community. I just don't know how to do that or where to begin.
I'm not the most social person so networking and leading will be a huge hurdle for me. I'm not creative enough with drawing or writing so creating flyers or propaganda would also be a challenge for me. I've always been more comfortable working and building things with my hands and have a pretty deep interest in land management and sustainability.
I also have the additional issue of being a person of colour in a mainly white town. Lifted trucks, SUVs, unwelcoming stares and plenty of entitled behaviours. The population in this town is mostly young families with younger children or old white folks which I doubt have any care for the future ahead of us. There's not much in between.
Over the past couple years, I have been buying various types of seeds and collecting seeds from my garden as plants mature. I've been trying to create a seed library for myself. Lately I've been thinking of trying to start a local seed library as a way to start some sort of community. Maybe even use that as a way to teach more local, sustainable habits.
I just don't know where to begin and starting feels quite overwhelming for one person.
I'm hoping to start a discussion or even brainstorm some ideas on what people can do, how to begin and how to follow through with building local communities.
Any idea outside of a seed library is welcome. It would help to have a nice, broad spread of ideas to draw from. I believe that would help keep the progress of the local communities adaptable as time goes on.
I live in a city, but I'll share some programs that/organizers who may provide some inspiration:
BMORE Beautiful - provides trash picking kits and helps residents organize cleanups in their neighborhood. They were incredibly friendly, so might be worth reaching out on how to build a similar program in your area
Weed Warriors - trains participants to recognize and remove common invasive plants, provides training for participants on how to organize efforts in their communities
Community gardening - this video is from an animal liberation podcast, but the guest's opening story of being completely ignorant about gardening but doing it anyway is inspiring. The remainder is about their work on food justice and grassroots organizing
Compost collective - this is the podcast of the guest in the previous video. They interview the founder of Baltimore Compost Collective who works with youth in the city
Guerrilla gardening - this is a classic TED Talk. The speaker discusses growing food in a public space and how they successfully fought their city to keep their garden. They also talk about their volunteer gardening group, planting food gardens at homeless shelters
Maryland Food & Abolition Project - may no longer be active, but an interesting idea nonetheless. Their mission was (is?) to partner community gardens with prisons to provide fresh produce
Echoing @poVoq, don't discount seniors! I used to be a case manager for the elderly and many are more interested than people give them credit for.