Community BBQ

A short while ago, Mid-City got a grant from Mercy Corps to do community outreach. As part of that effort, we decided to make our monthly community meeting for June into a BBQ. They say free food is the way to bring people out. We hoped such an event would bring out some new faces, let people get to know their neighbors, and help foster a sense of community.

So I’ve spent a lot of time over the last month or so trying to promote this BBQ. We printed up 6,000 flyers and I guess we distributed most of them.

We had the BBQ last night, and I’d say it was a screaming success.

The indefatigable Jennifer W. broke down the following numbers:

Dawn indicated we grilled 300 burgers, plus 8 veggie burgers, and I believe 70 hot dogs. Accounting that some people stopped by and didn’t eat, we likely had nearly 500 people present.

Deborah said we signed up 12 new block captains, and per the map we now have a block captain in each Zone!

We did $125 in merchandise sales.

We gave away 6 T-Shirts in our Ice Breaker raffle.

Geneva said we got 20 new members.

I personally met at least 100 new people, and am sure many others can say the same.

Many thanks to my neighbors who helped make this happen, especially Dawn who took on organizing the thing. We have sponsored many events since the storm, but this was exceptional.

But even while basking in the afterglow of a successful team effort, I am trying to think of things we might try differently in the future. I found the task of getting flyers out to our entire area (which is very large) to be almost overwhelming. In the future, I’d like to try to focus on one zone at a time. (We have divided our neighborhood map into thirteen sections.) It might even make sense to think in terms of a community BBQ and/or community meetings at the zone level.

Update: Alan has pictures. Thanks, Alan!