Over the last few months, the GOOD community has been meeting up in different cities around the world, from Hong Kong to Dallas, and it’s been really incredible to see that GOOD isn’t just a magazine… And it’s not just right here on good.is… GOOD is also a group of people meeting up in person, loving their cities, and loving the people, places, and ideas that make their cities awesome.
I’m excited to announce that a handful of us are launching a series of dinners and drinks (and other types of meetups) right here in the great city of London! London is a massive city with a thriving tech, culture, and social good scene, but it often is super siloed. GOOD London is providing an exciting opportunity to connect all the different boroughs and people who give a damn.
To kick off things, we’re hosting our first event in conjunction with The Feast at Method, set for this Friday, October 18. The response has been overwhelming! More than sixty Londoners will meet up over a great locally-sourced dinner and talk about what local food in our neighborhoods can look like. We’ll get insight from local experts, and end the night back online, where we’ll post challenges on good.is of how we can practically be a part of the local food movement, either right here in London or abroad.
Hosting dinner parties like this is a community effort, so props to my new GOOD co-leaders:
Brooke Stevens—lives in Hackney, but is an American who grew up in the Midwest. She’s a Digital Project Manager at Government Digital Service within the Cabinet Office (helping to make all government services and information much simpler, clearer and faster), and really loves a good game of table tennis.
Taichi Fujimoto—originally from Japan, but currently in London running a social enterprise called Happiness Architect, which focuses on design collaboration for innovation and happiness. Check out more about his current project here.
Swapnali Bhansali—originally from India, has worked with the Yahoo Foundation India and Himalayan Education Foundation, educating kids in rural areas. Now she’s in London working as a software engineer.
Priya Ghai—originally from Kenya, is a recent MA grad from Hyper Island. She is now helping other people and orgs as a creative strategist and facilitator here in London.
Follow them! They’re awesome.
As for me, I’m the Founder of Design for Social Change, a social impact business marrying real-time citizen data with grassroots action through the a mobile crowdfunding platform Changify. It’s exhilarating work, and meeting up with the GOOD community right here in London reinforces so much of the work I’m doing.
Friday’s Feast event is the first of many more ways that we want the GOOD community to come out and meet some incredible other people living in (and loving) London. First up will be GOOD Pub, a stellar idea from Taichi, on November 2. Together, we’ll meet up for a drink (or two) in the good ol’ classic way: as a community to share and talk about what’s happening in our neighbourhoods and what we can do to make them better.
Want to meet up and help us out? Follow me on good.is or give me a shout in the comments! (And feel free to join in on the conversation across social media with #GOODLondon). Join us for dinner by signing up online.
