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Caily Schwartz considered herself in the majority of people in her neighborhood who know few of their neighbors.
“Yeah, I think so,” the Crestwood South resident said. “But not anymore.”
That changed Saturday when Schwartz and her husband, Reilly, hosted a Meet Your Neighbors event, one of several that is scheduled for coming weeks throughout Birmingham.
The couple had a few friends over to their Crestwood South home. Well, they weren’t friends, but they are now.
“I wasn’t expecting so many people,” she said, “but I think we had probably about 40 throughout the whole day, which was great. And we’ve seen neighbors since then over the weekend. Everyone seemed to have a good time and they want to do it again. That’s awesome.”
The Meet Your Neighbors event is an outgrowth of work by the nonprofit Iron Hills Folk School.
“Its goal is to help like reduce isolation and build community in Birmingham,” said Natalie Crawford, organizing committee member for the Meet Your Neighbors program. Crawford said the program, which received funding through the national With Neighbors nonprofit, selected residents across 10 neighborhoods of the city and gave each from $60 to $200 to put together a small neighborhood gathering.
“We gave them advice on finding other resources for their events,” Crawford said. “A lot of the events have food and drink donations from local businesses or free venues that they got from local businesses. Our goal through the program is to build community ties within neighborhoods in Birmingham.
“We put it on our website calendar and then we posted about it on Facebook and Instagram ads,” she continued. “But Caily did most of the advertising. I think that she talked to neighbors and sent an email to the neighborhood association about it.”
Schwartz also went door to door, being careful not to appear sinister.
“I put flyers in everyone’s mailbox,” she said. “The sun goes down so early and we did it at night. I had my headlamp on and my reflective vest so I don’t get hit by a car. Every time I went up to a door, I was turning off my headlamp, so it wasn’t creepy. Everyone has Ring cameras now (and) it looks like I’m trying to pick their lock. That’s what I was afraid of.”
The Iron Hill Folk School is a nonprofit established in Birmingham last year under the auspices of the Sand Mountain Cooperative that promotes community-building through social events, skill-sharing events, lectures and panel discussions.
The idea is to battle a declining sense of belonging in many neighborhoods.
“People don’t have as much pride in their neighborhoods,” Crawford said. “They don’t know as many people who live near them, and it kind of creates a situation where people are kind of isolated. They don’t know the people who live directly around them.”
Meet Your Neighbors events began with a game night in Green Acres on Sept. 18 and most recently held a crafting night for Southside residents Monday. The next one is for residents of Eastwood and Crestline Gardens. Coffee and doughnuts will be served at the event Saturday, Oct. 10, 8:30-10:30 a.m., where the walking trail meets the end of Alpine. Another event will be held for South East Lake on Oct. 24, and there will be a gathering for Ensley residents on that date or in early November, Crawford said.
“Our ideal scenario coming out of this program,” Crawford said, “is that the neighbors who meet each other through this will continue interacting and maybe continue meeting in a similar style of event. We’re encouraging our hosts to make these gatherings not one-off so that they can continue to bring people together in their neighborhood.”
Saturday’s event featured polite introductions and conversations as people popped in and out of the three-hour gathering. For Theresa Rumore Nabors, it was a bit like old times as she grew up in Crestwood South.
“My grandparents also lived here, and it was just the same people who had been here all of my childhood and early adulthood,” said Nabors, who attended with her husband, Adam, and 6-year-old daughter, Cecelia. But by the time she moved back to Crestwood in 2006, the neighbors had changed.
“It’s just totally turned over (with) a lot of young people. I know a few of my neighbors, like my directly across the street neighbors, and families who go to school with my child are also in the neighborhood. Generally, I didn’t know any of those people who were at the coffee,” she said.
“All we can do is just start from somewhere, and why not?” said Nabors, whose father, Sam Rumore, was neighborhood president years ago. “Otherwise, we’re all living in our houses, in a nice neighborhood, in a nice community, but we’re not building community. We’re not making connections. But this is a new way to kind of bring us out of our houses, bring us out of our phones, bring us out of our isolation, our insular existences and out into our actual neighborhoods, into our communities. Yeah, I love that.”
Iron Hills Folk School has several community events set for October. Keep up with the schedule here:
- Enon Ridge Skill Share & Trade, Oct. 10 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Old Sardis Missionary Baptist Church, 1240 Fourth Street N.
- Civic Happy Hour at Lucky Stranger, in the Forest Park-South Avondale neighborhoods, Oct. 12 at Lucky Stranger, 4036 Fifth Ave S.
- Central City and Downtown Neighbor Mixer, Oct. 28 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Prevail Union coffee shop, 420 20th St N.
