“This is a story of evolution,” Joost den Hartog says of Neighbourhood Node, a thriving social enterprise founded in 2017 that is helping people connect in Adelaide’s west.
Joost describes the work of Neighbourhood Node as the practice of community-led development, and attributes the philosophy that underpins it to his Dutch background.
“If you grow up in the Netherlands, you listen to everybody around the table, and you don't leave the table before there is an understanding or broad support for the way forward,” Joost explains. “The societal system is based on consensus and general agreement.
“In Australia, the system is entirely different.
“When I first moved here, in 2006, I struggled because the culture is very much on one hand about individualism, and on the other hand, it's putting the responsibility on others, in this case, mostly authorities, to change things rather than using personal agency to determine your own outcomes and shape your own environment.”
Coffee as catalyst to connection
After purchasing two old shop fronts in Alberton to live in, Joost and his partner Christine Anthoney, realised that as much as they loved their home, they had no personal connections in the neighbourhood.
“We wanted to embed ourselves into the social fabric in the area where we lived,” Joost explains.
The couple decided to use one of the shopfronts as a “community asset”, turning it into a neighbourhood meeting space which, at the request of the community, became a coffee shop seven years ago known as The Pear, which operates as a social enterprise.
“Neither of us ever had the ambition to own a coffee shop,” Joost says. “It just happened that’s what the neighborhood thought was best to create connections.
“In retrospect, it was a good idea, because coffee is a great catalyst for connection. It cuts through social demographics, it cuts through age, it cuts through gender. As a result, we get all these different people with different backgrounds all interacting in this space on a regular basis.
“And out of that, relationships have emerged, friendships have formed.”
Evolutionary growth
“We started asking ourselves, ‘Okay, so the cafe works. We created a network around us, with people who know each other and support each other. What's next?’” Joost says.
The first step was to “move further into the neighbourhood” by organising street parties and gatherings in the local park to bring even more people together. These events were a success until COVID made in-person gatherings impossible and the focus shifted to activating informal networks of people checking in on each other and dropping off groceries.
Post-COVID, the café became a place that is “100 per cent about connections”, Joost explains.
“We dropped our breakfast and lunch menu and focused on coffee and snacks with the idea being that this is not about turning over tables - it is about creating a community.
“If you want to come and have one coffee or just a bottle of tap water, and stay all day because you want to, or because you’re lonely anywhere else, that's fine with us.”
Community-led development
By creating physical and social infrastructure, Joost says Neighbourhood Node’s goal is still simply to “empower everyday people to lead change in their own communities”, with a second space now in operation, QT in Queenstown.
“By activating under-utilised assets, we unlock community potential and foster a sense of social inclusion, local identity and belonging,” he explains.
Neighbourhood Node’s calendar of events now spans coffee and conversation, walking group, soup nights, garden working groups, crafting, yoga, card games, bingo, Justice of the Peace drop-in sessions and more. Anyone can get involved as a member, a volunteer, a neighbour, a community organisation or local business.
“People can get involved however and as often as they like,” Joost says. “There is a role for everyone who wants one.”
Neighbourhood Node was chosen as 1 of 10 community initiatives across Australia as part of the Village Hub Project, funded by the Department of Social Services, and now leads the development of the Minor Works Program, a scalable model for participatory community development, supported by philanthropy including the Fay Fuller Foundation, SA Health and DHS.
“Working in partnership with local residents, councils and the social sector, we have been able to demonstrate that grassroots action, when properly supported, can lead to transformative and lasting change,” Joost says.
The Minor Works Program helps turn ideas into exciting community activity and projects by working together. At bi-monthly soup nights people can come and talk about what they would like to see happen in the neighbourhood and begin thinking through a supportive pathway to bring the project to life.
The flexible and inclusive program guides ideas through four simple stages: Dreaming big, Planning it out, Doing the work, and Celebrating the success.
Joost says it is not only a way to continue to increase impact within the 5013 and 5014 postcode areas, but to develop a sustainable learning model that can be scaled as a framework for other communities.
With support from The Wyatt Trust’s Catalytic Local Investment Fund (CLIF), Neighbourhood Node is building towards an even more vibrant community-led future. The investment from Wyatt will be used as working capital to help the initiative engage independent research and measurement tools, develop toolkits and training, and establish a social enterprise consultancy to help other councils and communities implement the model sustainably.
“The investment is a real enabler to keep this going in the product development space,” Joost says.
“The relationship we’ve built with the Wyatt team has been really fantastic,” Joost continues. “It’s been very respectful, and I personally feel very supported in our mission.”
While the Neighbourhood Node model continues to grow, so too do the impacts of the social connection it has enabled.
“There are so many individual impacts,” Joost says.
“It might be that Cathy met John at the cafe, and now they support each other. It could be that the new community connections and activities helped keep Cathy out of the medical system. This neighbourliness develops a low-level care system through small acts like putting somebody's bins out, picking lemons off somebody's tree because they can't do it anymore, or stopping by for a cup of tea.
“Imagine instead of having someone drive from far away to have a cup of tea with you for half an hour as part of the NDIS that you were able to have a cup of tea with a neighbour anytime you like. This is the social fabric we would like to continue to strengthen. The benefits of that are massive.”
Learn more about Neighbourhood Node here.
Images courtesy of Neighbourhood Node
