Northwood News ♦ October 2021

Promoting Community Online:  NFCCA’s Listserv, Next Door

By Linda Perlman

Before moving to my house in Forest Knolls, I lived in a condominium building.  At my condominium, mail was delivered to individual post office boxes located in the lobby of the building.  Checking your mailbox and perusing the notices on the bulletin board was a daily ritual.  When checking your mail, you would often run into friends and neighbors who would update you on the latest gossip and information.  Sometimes these chats would extend to coffee or a sandwich at a nearby eatery.

Our neighborhood of primarily single-family houses does not have an equivalent community gathering space (although, in summer, the Forest Knolls Pool may be close).  And the pandemic has made many of us leery of close in-person contact with our neighbors.  To fill the void, many of us have turned to online communications, including Facebook groups, Zoom gatherings, and neighborhood listservs.

Our civic association-sponsored listserv, nfcca@groups.io, along with Next Door/Northwood-Four Corners (nextdoor.com), functions as an online community exchange of information on topics ranging from lost pets to downed trees, traffic and construction alerts to recommendations for plumbers, dentists, pet-sitters, and other services to yard sales and “curb alerts” for giveaway goods.  The listserv fosters community connections among the diverse residents of the separate Northwood-Four Corners-Forest Knolls neighborhoods.  Instructions to join the NFCCA listserv and Next Door are set forth in this newsletter under “Communicate with Neighbors” (see details here).  Give it a try.   ■