Kindness By the Book
When we say that residents in the Chicago suburb of North Riverside, Illinois, “wrote the book” on how to be good neighbors, we’re not exaggerating. The residents of North Riverside really did write a book on neighborliness that has helped make their town a remarkable place.
Neighbors All: Creating Community One Block at a Time is a 65-page manual filled with friendly suggestions (“Be the first to reach out”; “Be concrete in caring”) and inspiring stories, all designed to build “family bonds” among neighbors. Every household gets a copy, delivered by a volunteer “block captain” tasked with welcoming new arrivals, helping seniors run
errands, making sure kids play nice, and more. It’s a big job, but the 90 captains sprinkled across the town of 6,700 don’t do it alone. They’re organized by their own captain, Carol Spale, and the Neighborhood Services Committee, which appoints leaders of all ages, including a team of school-age “angels.”
If all this seems somewhat bureaucratic, in practice Neighbors All has very much lived up to its title. One captain, handing out flyers door-to-door, got to chatting with an older couple who revealed that they couldn’t afford to replace their broken stove. Before long, the Neighborhood Services Committee had collected enough money to buy them a new one.
Another resident, a woman from Poland, told her captain that she was having trouble sorting out the paperwork to get her citizenship. The captain told the committee, which told the mayor, who enlisted the help of their local congressperson, and soon the woman’s paperwork was all in order.
“I have been in North Riverside over 34 years and am very proud of the small-town caring the community demonstrates every day,” Vera Jandacek Wilt wrote in her nomination. “Waters rising in the river, ready to flood nearby homes? Residents and officials are filling sandbags to hold back the floods. Someone is displaced by a fire? Residents step up to provide food, clothing, and anything else the family needs. Lonely seniors have not stepped out of the house? A block captain shows up to invite them to a block party. This community truly looks out for one another.”
Does all this mean that North Riverside is perfect? No—neighbors still squabble. Kids still fight. But the community spirit that is part of North
Riverside’s DNA pops up all over town. At a recent Neighborhood Services Committee meeting, a girl told a story about another child she’d seen being bullied at school. The girl had an idea: She gave him a set of “warrior” dog tags to protect him from the bigger kids. And so it does—with a little help from his North Riverside angel.