CREATING CONNECTIONS, CREATING COMMUNITY

I was so bummed when I had to be out of town when La Crosse Soup hosted the 2016 Soup Summit. I did the very next best thing and shared my ticket with Natureman. 

Soup Summit 2016's goals were:
"*celebrate, explore, inspire, and improve La Crosse.
*celebrate and connect local innovators, fun-pushers,    and doers
*meet, inspire, and be inspired by some of the nation's top urban pioneers 
*train other communities on how to start a SOUP of their own
*set the stage for an even bigger year of SOUP in 2016
*and most importantly, a day to, have fun and make new friends
*an event for dreamers and doers only"

Unfortunately, Natureman could only attend the Saturday afternoon session called 'ideation.' But I have to admit he joined the right group. You may ask,"Why?" Well his group came up with the winning pitch of the brainstorming session to make La Crosse AWSM in 2016. Crowd funding in its purest form serves as 'seed money' for the idea's implementation.

What is it? A Souper Club. An offshoot of La Crosse Soup to continue community building on a smaller scale, creating connections with our neighbors at small (8-10 people) potluck gatherings of folks who don't know each other from our community.

So this past Thursday nine of us met to 'pot luck and plan' the  specifics of how the idea of Souper Club would be implemented including also the whens and with whom. 
The idea is to invite someone you don't know very well and then that person extends the invite to another who in turn invites another. If they are couples that already makes 10 which is ideal. Each attendee signs up to bring an item to share at the Souper Club gathering whether it be an entree, vegetable, dessert or beverage to feed 4/6 folks. The evening's host would fill in missing items if necessary, utilizing some of the project's "seed" money.

The goal is to create conversation and connections. Then, hopefully some of the attendees will also offer to host another Souper Club night the following month. You can imagine the domino effect... There was talk of larger park picnics, ice cream socials,etc... for which the seed money can be used for bringing neighbors together.

What can be better than breaking bread and meeting new people? I love win win propositions, don't you?

Kudos to the La Crosse Summit 2016 for sponsoring another way to build community!


Love this recent UpWorthy article :We Should Break Bread Together

LINKS to some PAST ENTRIES WITH LA CROSSE SOUP:

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

LA CROSSE SOUPERS DOING "GOOD""