52 Weeks of Neighboring - Week 13

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Neighboring Tip of the Week - Go for a walk around your neighborhood.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

For this week’s neighboring tip, we propose that you simply go for a walk around your neighborhood. Now that temperatures are really warming, this tip is a bit more feasible, and we think it’s a fantastic way to neighbor in the midst of this pandemic!

There are countless benefits to doing so, but we’ll just name a few. Going for a walk around your neighborhood…

  • Gives you the opportunity to engage in conversation with neighbors who are also out. We encourage you to not only walk around your neighborhood but also to be very intentional about seeking out interactions with your neighbors when doing so. Of course, if while walking you do have the opportunity to interact with neighbors, please do so with a good physical distance between you and them.

  • Makes you visible to your neighbors. Even if your neighbors are inside when you’re walking, they may see you out of their windows, and being out and about tells them that you are healthy and well!

  • Helps you remain informed about the happenings of your neighborhood. We don’t know about you, but because we’ve been out and about much less over the last couple months, we feel a little bit more out of touch with the things happening beyond our block. Walking gives us the opportunity to notice things in our neighborhood that may have changed over the last few weeks.

  • Allows you to notice assets in your neighborhood that you haven’t noticed before. Our neighborhoods are full of all kinds of assets, and sometimes, we don’t notice the less obvious ones until we take a walk.

  • Is the perfect opportunity to get out of the house and enjoy the fresh air! Most of us have probably been hanging out inside a bit more than we usually do, so this is the perfect opportunity to change up that routine and enjoy being out and about safely!

As with all of these neighboring experiments, please first and foremost be mindful of the health and safety of your neighbors! As was stated earlier, if you interact with any neighbors on your walk, please maintain a good physical distance between you and them. In addition, we would also highly recommend that you wear a mask when you go on your walk. We will continue to emphasize this: wearing masks helps protect our neighbors and ourselves, and beyond that, doing so tells our neighbors that we care about them!

Happy neighboring!