Tell Co-op how you would bring your local community together - chance to win a £300 voucher! NOW CLOSED

[EllieMumsnet]

Making a difference within our local community is something most of us would like do or are already a part of. To coincide with their push for more Member Pioneers Co-op would like to find out what you would do to bring your community together and how the Co-op might help.

Sarah MacKenzie from Co-op says: “At the Co-op, local communities are so important to us. In fact we're currently looking for Co-op Member Pioneers to help bring people together and make a real difference where they live. Member Pioneers are a network of individual members on the ground to make good things happen in communities across the UK. They do this by connecting and mobilising members, colleagues and local causes locally to do what matters most to them - arranging local meetings and events, encouraging volunteering and co-operation in their local community.

If anyone is interested in applying to be a Member Pioneer themselves, they can find out more here. We're always looking for ideas about events and initiatives the Co-op or our Member Pioneers could help with or organise and we'd love to hear what MNers think.”

So if you could do something to help bring your community together, and make it a better place to live and work, what would it be? Would you organise a big event? Set up a weekly coffee morning? Are you a keen fundraiser or a fan of a street party?

Whether you are already involved with your local community or just have some good ideas for things you’d like to do, share your thoughts below and you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £300 voucher of your choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

Standard insight T&Cs apply

There are quite a few elderly people who live on their own in our neighbourhood. I think it would be great if somehow the school could coordinate a visiting programme so that pupils could sign up to buddy an elderly neighbour - pop in for tea, help them with shopping, show them how to use Skype and that kind of thing

We have no shop at all in our village so at times it feels like there's no centre or soul or heart to the place. It must be quite lonely at times for the oldies. A community shop/coffee house would be lovely, I think.

My community do family fun days

I think a street party would be a good way to bring the local community together.

I would bring the community together by trying to work together to improve the local playpark

We used to live in a village that held an annual safari dinner / treasure hunt. Host families would prepare one of 3 courses and visitors would have to use their clues to work out which homes they were expected to visit. Great fun but must have been a job and a half to organise.

To be honest, the local farmers have just had a vintage tractor run through the village for a cancer charity. over £6000 was raised and 180 tractors took part. crowds lined the streets. this bought people together

Clean-up of older members of the communities’ gardens. When I was in secondary school we cleaned up the local church from overgrown vegetation to garbage people had thrown in.

I would set up a 'tea and toast' morning in our village. It is a very small community with a bus service which has been drastically cut. There are a large number of residents who are elderly who are lonely especially during the winter months and this would act as a weekly focus where anyone could drop in for a cuppa and pay what they could afford.

allotment plot.veg garden wilflower bit etc
volunteer for the peple who cant get out to deliver meals.library books
keeping library open
visitors for people alone or some to write.send cards to people in need.
community kitchen/cooking classes
soup kitchen.
opening the church permanently

I would love to start a scheme that brings the older generation and the younger generation together. There are so many older people that don't get out or have absolutely no company, I think it would be fantastic to start a buddy system that helps pensioners have a greater quality of life. :)

I would l love a community veg and fruit plot where each family contract to do an hour or so on the allotment each week and share in the produce. Children will learn where food comes from and be encouraged to eat more veg and everyone will learn how to grow food. A gardener could be employed to help manage the project. I would also produce a community recipe book based on everyones favourite recipes using our food.

I'd like to have a community garden that grew produce that we could use to provide community dinners every few months or community Afternoon Teas at our local church hall.

It would bring the community together both in tending and working in the garden and attending the special evening dinners & Afternoon Teas.

There is no fibromyalgia support group in the area so that would be a good idea & also somewhere that people with disabilities could share their information on what help is out there financially for people on low incomes. For 13 years I was paying for prescriptions, dental treatment & optician treatment & glasses when I shouldn't have been but nobody told me that I qualified for help & my cleaner's husband who has fibromyalgia was off sick for over a year without pay & didn't know he could claim any sort of benefits

I love the idea of getting the community together and think that coffee mornings, street clear ups and covering everywhere with flowers would be great ways to do it. Sadly there is no chance of that where I live. I live on a busy main road which is full of bedsits that are mostly inhabited by people who are constantly being hauled off by the police. There is so much trouble around here that I keep my head down and don't get involved with anyone! Sadly I fear that even being noticed looking at someone is enough to get punched in the face.

I think a summer street party is a good way to get all the neighbours together new and old also a Christmas party for the children

I'd have annual street parties - a sure fire way to get neighbours talking to each other.

There isn't a community feel where I live, nobody knows anyone else, with neighbours who are tenants and regularly changing. It it is a very diverse street consisting multiple languages and cultures. The only way to encourage togetherness would be to make use of a nearby space for communal purposes - a park and picnic parties would be good.

Guerilla gardening! A group of people locally took it upon themselves to tidy an overgrown and utterly neglected raised bed at our local parade of shops, now lots of people are bringing plants, weeding, trimming and chatting! It's great

Hold more events so people can actually meet each other. There is a kind of 'old guard' of families who have been here for years then a new housing estate and no one seems to know each other!

I personally don't think you need to organise massive events to bring the community together as in my opinion if too many people attend then the community feel is lost. Small events like garage sales (my mum is a pro at organising these!) get neighbours out and chatting together. I plan to do a Macmillan coffee morning in September where I will be inviting people who live in our road. No one can resist a cake!

The key is to create activities follow on from baby activities to older children but make it a community thing. I'm sure it would have a snowball effect and bring the community together

I'd love our area to have a take-a-book leave-a-book mini library, especially since the main library for the area (which was a real community hub) has been closed.

It would be great if there could be quarterly BBQ's or coffees for poeple in the local area so you can get to meet some of the people who live around you. This is especially helpful if you are new to an area and don't know anyone and a great way for your children to meet kids who live nearby too. Nothing too extravagant, just a very casual affair so people don't feel intimidated :)

i would encourage all the street to be responsible for cleaning the pavement directly outside their home. this would generate pride in the community