What Connecting with Roving Listeners Meant to Us
The following are the Perspective articles on GCDD's Real Communites Centenary United Methodist Church's Roving Listeners project from the Fall 2013 Making a Difference magazine. Click here to read the entire magazine.
What Connecting with Roving Listeners Meant to Us
By Mark and Jill Vanderhoek
We truly enjoyed our time with the Roving Listeners when a dozen of them came to visit us in June 2012. We quickly sat down in our crowded living room and told them our story. The listeners had lots of questions – where were we from, what did we like to do, how long had we lived in the neighborhood, what we liked about Macon and on and on.
We shared our love of Macon, our love of the community and of the Beall's Hill neighborhood. It is a place in transition, and one we hope where everyone will be able to find a place that is best for them. We shared our thoughts about our adopted home with the eager listeners, who sat in rapt attention on our living room rug. We shared our vision for Macon – a place of promise, a place where you could make your own way and a place where you could do the good that needs doing.
To make them feel welcome, Jill offered them homemade banana bread, and a few even admitted it was their first time eating it. With that, we realized it might be a good idea if these young people came to our garden. We told them of our passion for gardening and local food and for growing edibles in our flowerbeds. They sampled mint leaves off our plant and smelled the different herbs growing in our garden.
It was fantastic to know that we shared something with them that they could take with them. It was a pleasure to share that with young people, who may have been short on life experience, but were long on curiosity and enthusiasm.
Later, we attended several of the Roving Listeners community dinners at Centenary United Methodist Church, where we shared meals with our neighbors and got to speak with many of the listeners and their families. It was a pleasure to learn where the listeners came from and meet up with neighbors that we had spoken with on the streets, but had not had a full conversation with yet.
The project left such an impression on us that Jill decided to become further involved and serve as the Roving Connector for the project, using her connections in the neighborhood and the community to help plug in to the connections the listeners made within her own network.
It is an exciting job because it helps connect neighbors to neighbors, bridges gaps and connects together those with shared interests to make positive changes in the neighborhood. In the end, it will help build a stronger understanding of community.
The whole experience with the Roving Listeners program was positive. We made new connections with the young adults in the program and made new connections with our neighbors and our community. It was an experience we hope will come back through our neighborhood again, after it has made its way around our wonderful city.
Jill and Mark Vanderhoek's Bio:
Jill and Mark Vanderhoek have been married for 12 years and have lived in Central Georgia for nine of those years. They helped found the Beall's Hill Community Garden at Centenary and moved to Beall's Hill in 2011. Mark is director of community relations for River Edge Behavioral Health Center and Jill stays at home with their two daughters, three-year-old Dulcie, one-year-old Cordelia and an old dog named Rubin.
My Thoughts on Participating in The Macon Roving Listeners Project
By Khalil Williams
The Macon Roving Listeners project is an awesome organization supported by the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, Centenary United Methodist Church, the Exchange Club of Macon, St. Paul Episcopal Church, the Knight Neighborhood Challenge, a project of the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
This past summer, several leaders trained us on how to listen to our community. Each day, we walked up and down the streets in the summer heat and knocked on doors waiting for someone to be listened to. Some people would sit and talk with us. Some weren't interested and some weren't home. But, we stayed focused on our job – listen to people that were willing to be listened to.
At the end of each day, we would record the things people told us. Then, on a huge sheet of paper, we wrote different occupations, hobbies and interests to see what our neighbors had in common. Finally, we would clean up, head downstairs, eat dinner and head back home. This was a typical day of the Macon Roving Listener project.
The purpose of the project is to get engaged in the community and listen to what people had to say. Most of them told us about their past lives, like family history, past stories, childhood, education, what they are doing in life now, what they like to do and what they want to change about the community.
I remember a lot of people we talked to spoke with us for 30-45 minutes. We got a chance to really dig deep into their lives and learn more about what they think could improve the community. Some popular topics we noticed were crime, racism, stray animals in the neighborhood, better education and restoration of the downtown area. These were the main topics we discussed at our community dinners, held on Mondays.
These dinners were where neighbors, listeners and special guests would eat good food and talk about the topics listed above. Even though sometimes we would disagree on things, we still focused on trying to make our community better. The Macon Roving Listeners project was a great experience for me. It really helped me understand the community and the people in it. It also helped me communicate with people that I did not know.
The main thing I learned is to actually sit down and listen to what other people have to say. As a person, I know this is a good skill because most people only want to hear what they want to hear and nothing more. I would encourage people to join this project. I learned and did a lot with the leaders and the listeners.
It's a good way to get kids involved in the community. It's about having fun with the other listeners, going out into the community and listening to stories about people in that neighborhood – stories that may change the perspective you see in people forever.
Khalil Wiliams' Bio:
Khalil Wiliams is an eleventh grader at Southwest High School in Macon, GA. He is a smart young man who enjoys talking to other people and rides his bike everywhere. He also enjoys using and helping others with electronics like computers and cell phones.
