Soup, Socialising and Seriously Good Ideas

I have just returned from the first ever Southend Soup event!  For those of you not in the know, the idea came from Detroit Soup (see here) and is a chance for communities to come together, share experiences (and soup!) and pitch ideas for all sorts of projects which the community then vote for; the winning pitch receives the money donated by the people attending the event.  It really was such a fantastically inspiring evening; people came from all different areas of life and yet there was a real sense of community and goodwill in the air by the end of the evening, it was marvellous.  Credit has to go to the lovely Sherry for organising the entire shebang; she truly is one of life's genuinely beautiful Human Beans and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to know her.

So yes.  Simple idea, really.  You turn up at the venue, pay your donation/entry 'fee' and settle down for an evening of creative community spirit.  With delicious soup thrown in.  Seriously, people, what's not to love?  In an age where it all seems to be about "me, me, me" it's kind of nice to see that actually community spirit is still alive and well, and that people care enough to make the effort to come together and support one another.  Tonight, for example, I went along initially because I was curious and thought it sounded like a great idea, but then at the eleventh hour (well, yesterday afternoon) people were dropping out of pitching their ideas, so I 'volunteered' and made a pitch for funds to go towards buying presents for the kids at SHARE so Santa could give them out at our Christmas party.  The other project, which was absolutely brilliant and involved helping with the running and further development of a community allotment in a particularly-deprived area of Southend, bringing people together and giving them skills and a sense of wellbeing, was the victor on the evening (and thoroughly well-deserved, I have to say), but because I turned up to raise awareness of the SHARE project and our plans I was fortunate to receive some extra donations from people and made some potentially useful connections to help the cause.  All this from one evening chatting to people I did and didn't know!  It just goes to show you that, in spite of a vast swathe of evidence to the contrary sometimes, most people are in fact Thoroughly Good Eggs who are kind and lovely and want to come together for good, not bad.  One of the most important things I took away from tonight's gathering was that, actually, it's not all about growing people as individuals but growing them as a community, something which can often seem sadly lacking in this day and age.  The creative energy in that room as people mixed and mingled and exchanged information and ideas was remarkable; I feel genuinely blessed to have been a part of it.

For more info on Southend Soup, go here