The theme of this section is "bringing communities together in cooperation." When people start working together as a team, it’s amazing how much good can be accomplished!

Listed below are a number of group projects you can do with your friends and neighbors. All it takes to get a community project going is for one person to get the ball rolling by organizing the project and inviting others to participate. Just one person. Maybe you?

In addition to working with any of the projects below, I invite you to send in your own ideas for projects, and we will add them to this website. Simply e-mail your ideas to GlobalPeaceToday@aol.com, and type "Community Project Suggestion" in the subject box. Be sure to state your full name and where you’re from so we can give you credit for your idea! (Note: Please send your ideas within the e-mail itself, as we do not open e-mails with files attached.) You may also send information by regular mail to: The Global Citizenship Project, P.O. Box 22, Mountain Lakes NJ, 07046-0022.

Projects:

* When a new family moves in to the neighborhood, be the welcome wagon. Make some food and take it over to them. If they’re new to the area, you can give them a great gift by introducing them to the neighbors and recommending local services (restaurants, plumber, mechanic, dentist, and so forth).

* Restore a sense of community in your neighborhood. Organize a block party and invite all of your neighbors to get to know each other. Get permission from your town to rope off your street for a day, invite everyone on the block, ask everyone to bring food, and folding chairs and folding tables, ask if any musicians or other performers would be willing to entertain the crowd, have games for the children, etc. Having everyone wear name tags will help break the ice.

* Another fun way to get neighbors interacting is to get regular weekly "pick-up" softball games going. Choose a local park that has the space to play softball, and put up flyers and send out press releases saying that anyone who wants to play is invited to show up. Each week, divide the attendees into random teams, and just have fun. You can have different games for different age groups: a game for younger children one day, a game for teens another day, and a game for adults another day. Entire families can get together, play or just watch, and make new friends.

* Start a community "chain letter." Print up a "fill-in-the-blanks" form and give it to every family in your neighborhood. Ask them to "introduce" themselves by listing the names of everyone in their home, the ages of the kids, their address or phone number or e-mail, what the adults do for a living, and favorite hobbies and activities for everyone in the house. Gather all the responses and type them up into a "neighborhood bulletin" with a paragraph about each family. For example, "The Millers live at 221 Elm Street. Susan is a second-grade teacher, and Bill is a dentist. They enjoy camping, sailing, and opera. Their son Kyle is 12 and his hobbies are playing the violin and collecting baseball cards." And so forth. Send a copy of the bulletin to each household. This allows neighbors who share common interests to meet and interact.

* You could expand on the previous idea by organizing a "community barter exchange." Set up a website where everyone in town can post services they offer, and then people can barter for what they need. For example, a hairdresser can give free haircuts to a landscaper’s family in exchange for lawn service or leaf removal. A music teacher could offer free piano lessons to a housepainter in exchange for having her living room painted. And so forth.

* Start an after-school program for your community’s youth. Many kids these days go home to an empty, unsupervised house because their parents are at work. Give them someplace positive, nurturing, and safe to hang out after school. Perhaps you can use the school gym or cafeteria, and ask parents in the community to take turns volunteering their time to supervise the group one afternoon per month. Find different ways to entertain the kids: ask musicians to perform; bring in games and other activities for the children; tell stories; set up a video screen and rent positive movies for them to watch; teach them arts and crafts; invite guest speakers to give interesting presentations; have karaoke sing-alongs. If you make it fun, the kids will show up!

* Reach out to assist your community’s senior generation. Ask for volunteers in your community to each devote one day per month to helping local seniors with chores like shopping, running errands, housework, whatever needs to be done. Asking teens to volunteer is a great way to bridge the "generation gap" and bring all the community’s residents together in fellowship.

* There was a woman living in my neighborhood when I was a child who held garage sales once a month. She asked people to donate items they no longer wanted, and she set up tables in her driveway and sold the items, then donated all the money she raised to a local animal shelter. What a clever way to help raise funds for any cause you care about. (To get people to donate items, simply put up flyers around town, in supermarkets and community centers, and send press releases to your town newspaper.)

* If it snows, you can do a good deed by shoveling a neighbor’s walkway and driveway. This is especially helpful to those in the neighborhood for whom shoveling is difficult: the elderly, the infirm, even single mothers who are already overwhelmed with household responsibilities. This can be a lot of fun if you recruit some friends and make it a group activity.

* Start a neighborhood prayer group. This is not about religion; it’s about gathering a group of people who are willing to meet on a regular basis and pray for those in need. (There is a whole section of this website devoted to planetary healing through prayer, including lots of evidence that prayer actually does have an effect. Check it out: (click here) Form a group, ask for volunteers, determine where and when you will meet, and invite people in your community to submit requests for prayers to help them through any difficult circumstances. What a great way to "Love Thy Neighbor."

* Pray especially for people you do not like. Send them lots and lots of love. This serves a two-fold function: 1) People who are mean, violent, dishonest, and so forth are the people who are the most lost and in need of our help. 2) If you can open your heart and find compassion even for people you dislike, you have truly accessed a higher spiritual dimension and tapped into the greatest power that lies within all of us: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. (Note: This does not mean you have to condone everything these individuals have done. It’s simply about refraining from adding any more hatred to the world.)

* Many people who feel hopeless about their lives in some way -- whether they’re depressed and unmotivated, or abusing alcohol and drugs -- might feel a lot better if they got involved in some project that helps others. Perhaps if they see that they are making a difference, they will realize that their lives have meaning, and this might boost their self-esteem and give them the strength and motivation to work out their problems. Try contacting local 12-Step recovery groups and inviting their members to participate in community projects, for example. If people who are caught up in self-destructive behaviors learn that they have value in this world, it might help them stop hurting themselves.

* Start a community garden. Ask the town if you can use some land that’s lying dormant (or find a homeowner who has an extra acre or two s/he’ll allow you to use), and ask for volunteers to plant and tend a vegetable garden. Many people love gardening and find it relaxing, so finding volunteers shouldn’t be a huge problem. Once the vegetables are ripe, you can donate them to families in your town who are having trouble making ends meet. (this idea was sent in by Lucia Read of New Hampshire)