Building genuine connection with the people around you doesn’t require grand gestures or a lot of time. Even brief interactions with neighbours can gradually add up to something real: a community where people know each other, look out for each other, and feel less alone.

Whether you’ve lived in your neighbourhood for decades or just moved in, there’s always a place to start. The ideas below move from simple first steps to deeper levels of connection. Begin wherever feels right.

Start a conversation

• Say hello to a neighbour and take a moment to learn their name
• Ask a simple question: Where did you move from? Do you have a favourite spot nearby?
  • Need ideas? Browse these conversation starters →
• Post a question or prompt on a bulletin board in a common area to spark curiosity

Share something

• Offer to pick up groceries, collect mail, or water plants
• Drop off cookies, seeds, or a garden cutting
• Lend a tool or piece of equipment

Gather with others

• Host or attend a small event such as a potluck, morning coffee, or movie night
• Do an activity together like a walk, book club, or skills swap

Work together

• Set up a group chat with neighbours
• Make an emergency plan for your building or block
• Start a shared project like a garden or garage sale

You don’t have to do everything on this list. Small steps count, so just start with one action. A hello today might become a borrowed cup of sugar next month, and a trusted friendship a year from now.

Which step will you take? Tell us and learn more about the Capital Region Connection in Action campaign →

On May 14th, we brought together connectors from across the Capital Region for a workshop to kick off Connection in Action – a region-wide initiative focused on strengthening neighbourly connections, personal belonging, and community resilience.

Over the coming weeks, and in collaboration with our partners, we’ll be equipping and supporting people to take meaningful action to build social connectedness and communities of care.

The Capital Region Connection in Action campaign will culminate in a shared regional moment: Loneliness Awareness Week, June 15–21. Leading up to it and throughout that week, individuals and organizations across the Capital Region will host events, run activities, and take action to bring people together.

Ready to take part?

Whether you’re planning a coffee morning, a neighbourhood walk, or simply want to learn a neighbour’s name, every act of connection counts.

Visit the campaign page to learn more and find resources to help you get connected: 

We’re thrilled to welcome the newest cohort of partners delivering Connect & Prepare!

Connect & Prepare is an innovative program that helps grow social connections between neighbours and support shared emergency preparedness and resilience in their communities.

Staff from a dozen different organizations are being trained as facilitators of our neighbour-to-neighbour resilience programming, expanding Connect & Prepare’s reach and impact to more places across British Columbia. Through our train-the-trainer model, they’re learning how to deliver and adapt Connect & Prepare in their communities.

On February 24th, we kicked off the second part of this latest round of facilitator training with an in-person gathering of representatives from housing operators, local governments, health authorities, and place-based organizations.

Our new partners in this cohort include:

• Richmond Family Place
• Victoria Downtown Residents Association
• Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House
• Fraser Health
• Vancouver Coast Health
• City of Richmond (Emergency Management)
• Sunshine Coast Regional District
• Metro Vancouver Housing
• BC Housing
• Brightside Community Homes Foundation
• Concert Properties
• Resilient Coast / OneEarth Solutions

Over the coming months, we’ll be supporting these partners as they deliver programming to help neighbours get to know each other, learn about both large-scale emergencies and chronic, everyday stressors, identify assets and priorities, and implement shared preparedness projects.

To learn more about Connect & Prepare, read our story about how residents in four BC Housing buildings strengthened connections with their neighbours and became more confident about preparing for challenges in the future. 

Interested in bringing Connect & Prepare to your community?

We regularly offer training to organizations looking to learn the Connect & Prepare approach. Read about the program and its impacts and reach out to us at info@resilientneighbourhoods.ca.

Building Resilient Neighbourhood’s (BRN’s) Neighbours Helping Neighbours (NHN) pilot—done in collaboration with  Hey Neighbour Collective and ten delivery partners—brought residents of multi-unit housing together to learn about and nurture intergenerational neighbourly support. A key learning question was: Can a culture of mutual support be established among neighbours that will help people, especially older adults, age in their own homes or “in the right place”?

The answer from the pilot: A resounding “yes”!

NHN activities ranged from lobby intercepts, surveys, and workshops where residents discussed how to help each other, to resident-led projects setting up systems to help each other on a day-to-day basis or during times of illness or emergencies.

Across all of the activities, it became clear that strengthened social connections—especially alongside growing familiarity and trust—helped create the foundations for residents to ask for, give, and receive help.

In addition, as residents became more connected with each other and with delivery partner organizations, these residents also became more connected to other community services, supports, and resources that could help them age in place.

And while some residents initially had reservations and concerns about asking for or offering help, these resistances were lowered as they openly discussed and became more comfortable with each others’ needs, and established a shared sense of appropriate boundaries.

Finally, when neighbours collaborated to set up any kind of simple system or structure to facilitate mutual assistance—such as an emergency preparedness plan or an ask/offer bulletin board—this helped establish and normalize a culture of helping among one another and across their entire building.

So, although the NHN pilot was short-term, some of the most important elements that help activate neighbourly helping and support aging in place quickly emerged!

Learn more in the Neighbours Helping Neighbours: Pilot Learning Report 2023-2025.

One of the most important learnings from Building Resilient Neighbourhood’s (BRN’s) Neighbours Helping Neighbours (NHN) pilot was that connecting is an easy first step for residents to make, but engaging in mutual support requires a bigger leap.

Done in collaboration with Hey Neighbour Collective and ten delivery partners, the NHN pilot brought residents of multi-unit housing together to learn about and nurture intergenerational neighbourly support. It’s something that’s becoming all the more important with growing economic uncertainties, and in a country where families and friends often live far apart.  Yet for residents, while organizing and participating in social activities in their buildings felt relatively easy, many reported feeling some level of anxiety, hesitation, or resistance about “helping” neighbours.

Many residents said that Canada’s dominant culture of celebrating and normalizing individualism contributed to creating feelings of discomfort around asking for or offering help to others. Some residents reported feeling more comfortable offering help than asking for it, while others felt uncomfortable with both—asking felt like exposing vulnerability and imposing upon another, while offering felt like they were implying the other person was less capable.

Furthermore, the idea of “building mutual support” encompassed a wide range of possible types of ongoing activities—and therefore could seem intimidating to commit to participating in.

Fortunately, delivery partners and resident-leaders found ways to shift these attitudes and move neighbour groups more comfortably towards engaging in mutual support activities and projects. Some of the strategies that were most effective included:

• Allowing time and space for residents to discuss any concerns openly and frankly, without pressure on anyone to make decisions or commitments, while inviting views from people who’ve experienced less individualistic cultures.

• Fostering the social connections, familiarity, and trust that make it easier to ask and offer help to one another.

• Collectively establishing reasonable “boundaries” for what is asked for or offered, and for everyone’s privacy and safety to be protected.

• Considering simple ways to start, such as specific types of helping in discrete, time-limited contexts.  (Emergency preparedness projects were found to be a good starting point.)

Since there’s no doubt that engaging in mutual support is a bigger step for any group of neighbours than simply connecting socially, we also found that a neutral facilitator can help. A facilitator can guide residents through these sometimes sensitive discussions and the complexity of emotions and cultural attitudes around neighbourliness and helping—and assist in bringing the group along at its own pace towards fostering a culture of neighbourly support.

Learn more in the Neighbours Helping Neighbours: Pilot Learning Report 2023-2025.