What If NDG Became a Neighbourhood That Asked, “What Can You Teach Me?”

 

Every person walking the streets of NDG knows something that somebody else would love to learn.

Think about that for a moment.

Behind the doors of our apartments and houses are thousands upon thousands of skills, experiences, traditions and talents.

Someone knows how to repair a bicycle.

Someone can bake magnificent bread.

Someone speaks three languages.

Someone knows how to grow tomatoes.

Someone can teach a child to play guitar.

Someone knows how to sew on a button, prepare an incredible curry, use a computer, paint a room, make a household budget, change a tire, take a beautiful photograph or fix a dripping faucet.

And our older neighbours possess something particularly precious:

decades of accumulated knowledge.

Yet much of it remains hidden because we've created a society in which, when we need to learn something, we usually turn to a screen rather than to one another.

What if NDG began doing something different?

What if we created a culture of neighbours teaching neighbours?

Not formal classes.

Not necessarily businesses.

Just people occasionally saying:

“I know how to do this. I'd be happy to show you.”

Imagine a retired carpenter teaching a teenager how to use tools.

A teenager helping a senior understand their smartphone.

A grandmother teaching several children the recipe her own grandmother taught her.

A newcomer to Canada teaching neighbours a few phrases in their first language.

A gardener showing apartment dwellers how to grow herbs on a balcony.

A musician sitting in the park with three people who have always wanted to learn their first guitar chord.

Suddenly something much bigger than teaching is happening.

People are becoming useful to one another.

And there is something profoundly human about being needed.

Too often we look at community primarily in terms of what people need.

What if we also began asking what they can give?

The person who needs help carrying groceries might also be the finest storyteller on the block.

The teenager who needs encouragement may be able to teach an 80-year-old how to video-call her grandchildren.

The newcomer who needs help learning English may know how to prepare food that twenty neighbours would love to learn to make.

Everybody needs something.

Everybody knows something.

And everybody has something to contribute.

I would love to see little “Teach Me / I'll Teach You” gatherings appear throughout NDG—on benches, in parks, apartment common rooms, cafés, libraries, churches and community centres.

We could even begin simply by asking people we meet:

“What are you really good at?”

What a wonderful question.

Not:

What do you do for a living?

Not:

How much do you earn?

Not:

What can you do for me?

But:

“What have you learned in your life that you could teach somebody else?”

Imagine the answers.

Today's challenge, then, has two parts.

Ask one person:

“What could you teach me?”

And then ask yourself:

“What could I teach someone?”

Perhaps nothing happens immediately.

But perhaps a conversation begins.

Then a lesson.

Then a friendship.

Then another neighbour joins.

And slowly we begin discovering something extraordinary:

NDG itself is a university.

Our classrooms are kitchens, parks, sidewalks, workshops, cafés and living rooms.

And our teachers are each other.

A NuVo World will not be built only by experts, governments or institutions.

It will also be built when ordinary people recognize the extraordinary reservoir of knowledge sitting right next door.

Learn something.

Teach something.

Share what you know.

Ask someone else what they know.

Because a community becomes richer whenever its people stop merely living beside one another and begin learning from one another.

A NuVo World — creating a NuVo, better world one day, one person and one shared lesson at a time.