Savannah’s Hello Neighbor creates connection through Multi-Neighborhood Fall Festival

Local nonprofit Hello Neighbor has developed a reputation for putting on events designed to bring people together. With its Multi-Neighborhood Celebration and Fall Festival, happening 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Oct. 28, next to the Daffin Heights Community Garden, 1712 E. 58th St., they’ll be inviting folks to celebrate the area in the founders’ own backyard.

“For this one it was a little different,” explained Executive Director and Holly Heights resident Lisa Rundstrom. “I was really taking a lead again. And I’m always a leader for the event, but who is gonna be a part of it looks very different based on who’s living in that community.”

To that end, the festival will include many of the things that one can expect from a fall gathering in Savannah: Live music, food, and bounce houses, popcorn, and snow cones for the kids. But in this case, the music will be coming from folks based in the surrounding neighborhoods, and the food will be courtesy of Paul and Kathy Glover of The Glover’s House.

“We’re using time and space, location, to look at what’s going on here,” Rundstrom said. “So, I’m not just building an event, I’m looking to the neighborhood association. Let’s build something together.”

‘There was no kind of blueprint for how to be involved’

The Multi-Neighborhood Celebration and Fall Festival will also include a number of outside-the-box additions to the formula by which so many organizations create their autumn events. Gullah Geechee Master Storyteller Patt Gunn, for example, will be on hand as a “Truth Telling Speaker,” as will celebrated author Dr. Deborah Johnson-Simon, presenting her Kulture Keepers Cookbook. Solomon Temple Church of God in Christ Pastor Larry Gordon will be in attendance, fundraising to bring Anne Bailey, author of 'The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History,” back to Savannah. And Rundstrom is also bringing in the Savannah State University Art Club to add art and additional spoken word performances to the festivities.

“There was no kind of blueprint for how to be involved and to be a partner with others, and community building, and advocating for one another,” Rundstrom noted. “So, as I continue to do this, I’m understanding how to partner better, how to be a supporter of others, not just a leader, but a follower.”

Remarkably, just a few years ago only the slightest remnants of a neighborhood association even existed in the area. Rundstrom managed to track down two former members: Clementina Cleland, better known as “Miss Joyce,” and Anthony Lonon, who’d single-handedly been working to keep the garden alive.

“One of the reasons Hello Neighbor started was, when I moved to Savannah, the neighborhood that I live in [Holly Heights] had an inactive neighborhood association,” explainedRundstrom. “There had been a community garden that had been built, like, 10 years ago; it was getting dilapidated. So, I was trying to reconnect with my neighborhood and navigate this space in Savannah.”

Flash forward to today, and not only has the garden been beautified (a component of the festival is to celebrate its restoration), but the neighborhood association has grown from just Rundstrom, Cleland, and Lonon into a well-organized group of 62 members.

“Where I was from, Wichita, Kansas, I was really deep into the community since inception,” Rundstrom laughed. “From eighteen [years old] I was creating events and being a part of it, and all that stuff. And so, coming to Savannah as a person who is not from here…For the first time in my life, I felt disconnected. And I craved [connection].

“We’re helping each other to co-create that we both need,” she continued. “They need it and I need it.”

Hello Neighbor Multi-Neighborhood Celebration and Fall Festival Poster

Hello Neighbor’s Multi-Neighborhood Celebration and Fall Festival is, perhaps, the pinnacle of Rundstrom’s community work locally, a physical manifestation of a neighborhood revitalized by the efforts of its citizens. She won’t take the credit, but those who know the work she’s done will no doubt see her fingerprints all over the event.

“We’re trying to create community connections,” she said. “We’re trying to beautify these neighborhoods.”

“Let’s come together and do something fun and different that we really haven’t done before.”