Care to Share?

From neighbor Alan Berger comes a novel plan to begin a true Lefferts Barter network, though something called Neighborgoods.com. I just signed myself up and realized I have so many things to potentially lend to people I wouldn't know where to begin. My wit? My charm? My ego? My messiah complex? My push lawnmower?

Seriously, this sounds like a great idea if it reaches critical mass.

Here's Alan:


 Hi Everyone, I'm getting back to you all on the next step in setting up the PLG sharing goods program! I've written to the Lefferts list serve a couple of times on this recently and want to make sure we are reaching as many people as possible in the PLG neighborhood, so apologies if you're getting this more than once if you happen to be on multiple services. For those not familiar with this concept, it's an outgrowth of the sharing economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing_economy). Examples are Zipcar, Airbnb, Citibikes-- ride sharing, couch surfing, and many others. It's about sharing and making more accessible all the stuff we own. But instead of sharing cars, homes, rooms, bikes, or couches, (mostly to make money), the effort in PLG is about sharing the household goods that we all own, but don't use very much, (or use but are happy to share with neighbors), without trying to make money. The goals are to buy less stuff to reduce consumption and help the environment, save money, have access to a wider variety of goods, and build community. We can also share services with each other too.

To get this off the ground we've chosen NeighborGoods (neighborgoods.net) as the online site where we can connect and list our goods and services to share and do so privately at no cost to individuals or to the group or neighborhood. We've already created a private group called PLGshare, so the people you share your things with will be people who live, or maybe work, in this neighborhood. The only way this is really going to work well is if we get a critical mass of people from the PLG neighborhood to join and offer goods and services to establish a real marketplace in our area. So, it's important to sign up, list the goods and services you want to share, and get the word out to as many people as possible that live in this neighborhood or in close proximity to it.

Below is a step-by-step guide to joining the service and listing or requesting goods and services. Please let me, Alan, know if you have questions or concerns about any of this. We can also help you join and list your goods on the site, so let me know if you'd like us to do that for you. To help publicize this program, we're putting a call out for people to create a flyer and post it up around the neighborhood. If you know of online sites, community meetings, block parties, or other ways to get the word out, please let me know.

Thanks and hope to be meeting you and sharing goods with you soon! Alan, Susan, Bill, and Caroline

Step-by-step guide to joining the PLG sharing goods program:

• 1. Go to site - neighborgoods.net, and register. You'll receive an email asking you to confirm and enter in a code to the neighborgoods site to complete registration. 
• 2. Once that is done register for the PLGshare group-you can do that two different ways: one is to go to the Groups section on the left side of the screen and click on PLGshare, then click on "apply to join," and send any message and I'll sign you up. Or, you could ask me for an invite and I'll send you one to enable you to join. alanpberger@gmail.com.
• 3. To add things to share or to put out a request for something that you want, go to the left side of your home page under Your Stuff, under the Groups section click on PLGshare 
• 4. On the right side of your home page under Group Tools, you can click on "Add an Item" or "Add to Wishlist" depending on what you want to do. 
• 5. To add an item - click on "Add an Item" - enter the name of your item in the "Share your" box - enter the approximate cost of your item in the "I paid about" box (this info is used to help the service figure out the total value of goods and services being shared to get an idea of the social value of this service) - enter the type of item you are sharing from the "Category" box, if it's a service, select "Other." - in the "Who can borrow this" box, select the "share privately with group" option. - Finally, click on "Add to inventory." 
• 6. To request an item, click on the "Add to Wishlist" box on the right side under "Group Tools" and follow the steps, which are similar to adding an item. 
• 7. If you'd like to invite other people in the neighborhood, hit on the "Send Invites" button under "Group Tools," and follow the steps. The more people and goods we get onto this group, the more likely we are to make this work for everyone!