At our monthly community meeting last night we had a visitor who told us about a cool idea to connect people and share skills.  Ben Paul, a Pitt student, got a Sprout grant to set up CommuniTeach, a website and organization where you can sign up, list your skills, and link up to other people who have skills that you’d like to learn.

And it’s absolutely free! This is a community-building, people-connecting thing, not a for-profit thing.  This is an experiment in getting people together and sharing knowledge.  If this sounds interesting, check out the CommuniTeach website, or email ben@communiteach.com.

If you want to test out the idea, start small, with friends, in your neighborhood.  At the community meeting, several people said they’d like to learn how to play the guitar–and a few people said they knew how to do that.  We’ve already had some knowledge-sharing acitivity in Polish Hill.  Last month, an older resident welcomed a new arrival  into her kitchen and taught her how to make paczki (a Polish treat similar to a filled donut).  Another resident gave free knitting lessons.  Imagine if we could expand this!  CommuniTeach is a useful tool because they have a setup where you can list your skills and connect with others.  We think this is a good idea and hope that this summer will be a time when lots of residents learn how to do new stuff!