Neighbourliness is back
While the coronavirus crisis deepens, communities are growing stronger and people are becoming more neighbourly. Dominic Harris finds the garden-fence friendships of yesteryear have now moved online. ‘People actually speak to each other as if they’re talk
As the spectre of the coronavirus lockdown cast its long shadow across New Zealand this week, Christine Jarman’s mind edged towards concern.
The 81-year-old had been having trouble getting through to some of the major supermarkets, trying in vain for days to order a delivery of food.
Genetic lung defects and her age mean she is among those most at risk from the disease – her husband Michael, 80, also has a bad heart – so the couple did not want to take any chances by straying too far from the bubble of their home in Auckland’s One Tree Hill suburb.
With her family in Australia, she did what many of us are doing in these straitened times and turned to the internet for help.
‘‘I started thinking about an alternative way of getting some help, and I posted a note on Neighbourly in Auckland with my address – I was thinking of an individual at that stage,’’ Jarman said.
‘‘I also got on to the student volunteer army as well.’’
A response was lightning fast, the student army, founded in the wake of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, first out of the blocks and arranging for someone to come out within 48 hours.
The offer was a huge relief for Jarman, who is full of praise for those who volunteer their time.
‘‘I think it’s marvellous. We were thinking, ‘are we actually going to have to go out?’
‘‘There are so many lovely people in the world. You start to connect with people outside your immediate friends and family, it’s just absolutely wonderful.’’
The Jarmans’ story is far from unique. In these unprecedented times, many are returning to the garden fence of yesteryear to offer and ask for help, reaching out to neighbours and loved ones for assistance – being more neighbourly.
That garden fence of the past has, of course, been largely replaced today by the internet.
It is often castigated as the antithesis of being social, but as the pandemic deepens – cases in New Zealand reached 451 yesterday – it has shown that those cherished values of humanity – of caring, of community, of friendship – have not been lost, merely buried by the strains of life.
Now, with coronavirus gripping tighter, they are reemerging, people around the world using the internet as a platform to come together, to educate, to contact those around them and to have fun.
From Les Mills gym teaming up with TVNZ to screen free exercise classes to journalist David Farrier hosting online Netflix parties for his show Dark Tourist and Black Caps captain Kane Williamson showing off his dog’s backyard cricket skills, people are using the online world as a diversion during the month-long lockdown.
But it is as a forum for kind deeds that the internet has come into its own in recent weeks.
Thousands of people have used it to offer assistance to those left isolated and in need of help, like Auckland sisters Rachel Paris and Bridget Snelling, who founded Friends In Need to match volunteers with people needing support to check up on them each day and pick up supplies such as food and medicine.
Leading the charge is Neighbourly, an online network set up almost six years ago to connect people and bring back the sense of community that has too often been lost.
With 820,000 members – it is second only to Facebook as a social media network in New Zealand – the site, owned by Sunday News parent company Stuff, has seen a boom in users over the past few weeks, numbers using it on Thursday almost double that of seven days earlier.
Its members have set up more than 100 coronavirus support groups, and numerous more individuals have taken to it to offer little acts of kindness to the people who live nearby.
From people giving away free bottles of hand sanitiser and offers to do shopping or pick up medication to sharing ideas for healthy recipes or ways to grow vegetables, the site is a forum for that sense of community – so vital in times of crisis – to flourish.
Among them is Michael Paton, a former IT contractor now studying creative media in Palmerston North, who has set up a number of support groups.
‘‘The purpose is to try and get people to come together with people who are close and near, to share information and offer support,’’ the 34-year-old said.
‘‘It’s people picking up prescriptions and getting groceries, doing it for those who are high-risk and don’t have people able to do that for them, and just generally give a sense of community to try and come together and do this for each other and to help one another through this.’’
Paton has also revived his IT skills, volunteering his time with others to offer their expertise online, and encouraging people to check in on each other.
‘‘It really is something that we lost, having that conversation,’’ he said.
‘‘If anything is learned from this virus I think that is one of the most important things – that we, even though we are in isolation, do not allow ourselves to become isolated individuals or islands unto ourselves anymore.’’
For Jake Shand, the head of Neighbourly, the platform is a ‘‘civil network’’ rather than a social one, connecting the online world with the real world.
‘‘People actually speak to each other as if they’re talking over their front fence or as if they’ve met them down at the shops, because they are from their community.
‘‘It really does get people to reach out and offer help and services to their direct community.’’
Based on a ‘‘hyper-local model’’ to bring people in local streets and suburbs together – and acting as the neighbourhood noticeboard, shop small-ads window and gossip mill all rolled into one – Shand says it gives people ‘‘a lightning rod to their community so they know what is happening quickly’’.
At the moment Neighbourly is being used by the Government to inform people about what is going on with the level 4 lockdown, ensuring that vital messages reach its members.
Many of those users are older people, and Shand feels it offers a good way to reach out and ask for help.
JAKE SHAND