…ask what Boston can do for you!!! From the ONEin3 Advisory Council’s Civic Engagement Engineers:
When I moved to Boston in January 2010, I had to lay the ground work and put in the effort to meet people and become familiar with my surroundings. I would show up to Urban Land Institute, American Planning Association and Livable Street Alliance events by myself; went to the Waterfront, Four Winds, Bell in Hand and other bars and tried to strike up conversation with people in order to meet new friends; read NorthEndWaterfront.com and signed up for Bob O’Brien’s Downtown North Association listserv to find out what events were happing around me; emailed Nicole Leo, my Neighborhood Coordinator; attended the North End/Waterfront Neighborhood Council and North End/Waterfront Residents’ Association meetings to get involved in neighborhood; went skating at the Steriti Memorial Rink and swimming at the Mirabella Pool; volunteered at the polls in Charlestown during the mid-term election…But, I was still frustrated because I was still unemployed, I wasn’t able to break
into pre-existing cliques, and I didn’t feel like I could call Boston home.
This led me to write an unsolicited email to Mayor Menino and Chief of Staff Weiss asking what the City of Boston offered for young professionals and proposing what I thought I could do to help. I had my fingers crossed that this would help me find a job (we have all been there and tried it!). While I did not get a job offer, I did get a reply from the Mayor’s Correspondence Staff and personal reply from Chief of Staff Weiss, who put me in touch with ONEin3 Boston. I started to help out with the ONEin3 North End Neighborhood Group, began to feel like less of an outsider in my own neighborhood, and applied to join the ONEin3 Boston Mayor’s Advisory Council.
It took about one year from when I moved here for everything to click. I have heard that not everybody would wait that long, especially if you do not have a full-time job. There are many great aspects to the City of Boston, but even for someone extroverted like me, it can be hard to find exactly what you want.
Hopefully my experience can provide some useful tips for how someone new to Boston can get involved. But even more importantly, I hope it gets you thinking of what I failed to mention and what would make your experience in Boston even better, sooner. We are all individuals and are all looking for different things. So if you have advice for others whose interests I have failed to identify, let us know about that as well. The ONEin3 Boston Mayor’s Advisory Council and I look forward to reading your comments below. Thanks.
