A few years ago I moved to a house that could not accommodate my sofa. It was a good sofa, in decent shape for being 10 years old. I would have kept it, but it did not fit in my new living room. I tried to donate it to the local thrift stores. None would take the donation. I tried to donate it to shelters, halfway houses, upholstery shops. I tried to sell it. Nothing.
I started noticing upholstered furniture abandoned everywhere. Chairs and couches were along the sides of the roads. They were piled up outside the fences and parking lots of the thrift stores that told me not to bring mine. The landfills and dumps were overflowing with overstuffed furniture, most of which - I assumed - was in decent shape before landing in the dump.
I started dreaming up ways to save both the furniture and the landfill space. Consider: Conduct a training class in upholstery for folks who are struggling. Use the donated sofa as class project. Use donated fabric for the new covering, if possible. It's a win-win-win. Landfill saves space; I dispose of my sofa; sofa is used toward a good purpose; folks get trained in a new skill; and the newly upholstered sofa can be sold to help support the classes or donated to Habitat or transitional housing.
And that got me wondering how many winning links I could add. Would it be possible to extend the winning chain more broadly into the community? How far could a single chain extend?
So the challenge of Community Handworks is to design for your community a winning chain that is as long (or as branching) as possible. The goal of Community Handworks is to allow diverse members of your community to engage in creative handwork while also building a stronger sense of community.
As we walk across the Harbor Bridge/ We reach across the years/ We reach across our differences/ We reach across our fears/ We reach into the mystery/ As we seek to understand/ The meaning of our history/ We must each extend a hand
Chorus of a song about a march of reconciliation in Sydney, Australia
© 2000 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP)
From the CD “The Greatest Story Never Told” by John McCutcheon, Red House Records 2002
