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A ritual is a patterned, repetitive, or symbolic enactment that helps group members establish and maintain a strong community network and a unique group identity.
Rituals are essential for individuals and communities as they provide reliable markers for group membership, help demonstrate how to commit to a community, facilitate cooperation within the community, and increase social group cohesion. In short, Ritual allows us to create habits, learn, grow and connect.
Communication Rituals
Communication rituals involve finding fun ways to create repetitive and symbolic interactions with community members, often tied to a specific event. Examples:
-Welcoming each new neighbor that joins your neighbor community or having three neighbors welcome every new neighbor that joins. *This may involve you messaging two other active neighbors every time a new neighbor joins and asking them to make the new neighbor feel welcome.
-Encourage every new neighbor who joins your neighbor community to introduce themselves and include their favorite restaurant.
-Give shoutouts on birthdays, and include a unique meme.
-Have every neighbor who shows up to an event share a random fact, like where they got their couch or how many places they have lived.
These occur seasonally or around a specific holiday.
-Have a 'neighbors giving' every year, where everyone brings a dish to share.
-Decorating the lobby for Halloween.
-Getting together on earth day to have a picnic instead of staying inside.
These rituals can be centered on an important task or just building a sense of togetherness and community, but they always happen on the same day of the week or month.
Frequent gatherings work best when they allow for the "just show up" approach and don't require too much planning or participation from the participants aside from bringing themselves.
-Town Hall Meetings on the last Thurs of every month.
-Wine Night Social, on the last Wed of every month.
-Bring your coffee to the lobby every Sunday morning from 10-12 am and socialize.
Choosing which rituals suit you and your neighbor community is up to you, but we recommend asking some neighbors for their suggestions to see what creative ideas you can pull and what commitment everyone is down for.
Once you have some ideas, plan how best to execute them for success and alleviate any pain points from making them occur.
Ex:
-If you want to have a wine night every month. Choose the same day and time to host it every month, and add all the events ahead of time in the app. Then add it to your calendar with a reminder, and if you see a date you can't commit, see if someone else will take over hosting.
Planning makes you more likely to stick to your community goals and helps others participate by adding structure, e.x. If you meet at the same date/time every month for a wine night, others will know that when they meet a new neighbor, they can invite them to this recurring event.
Being a Community Leader will always have its challenges, but adding in some community rituals helps neighbors know how, when, and how they can participate in their neighbor community. As well as, enables you to achieve more by reducing stress over the planning and execution around neighbor gatherings, welcoming new neighbors, and participating.
