Dear Earth Carer, being a good villager is the best choice I have made for my career, community, and the planet.

Dear Earth Carer,

Sometimes I think we are too focused on caring for the planet, that we miss the importance of caring for those around us. How many times have you heard someone say, “Humans are the worst” or “I wish humans were just erased from the world!”? I bet that at some stage you have uttered words similar to these sentiments, or maybe you still do. Growing up in a westernised country, it felt as though this needed to be someone’s primary belief to be an Earth Carer. Humans are bad, trees are good, they say.

Throughout my Earth Caring journey, I began challenging this notion as I shared stories, thoughts, knowledge, and experiences with fellow Earth Carers from around the world. “How can humans be bad when so many passionate people are working tirelessly to care for their local and global environments?” I wondered. You may have guessed from my work in creating Lonely Conservationists, or my relentless droning on about needing to care for each other, that I actually like humans now. To push that sentiment even further, I would go as far as to say that caring for each other is the best thing we could do to protect our natural world.

It would also be remiss of me not to say that I now believe that human-based slander is deeply offensive to the multitude of Indigenous communities that have cared for Country in reciprocity for thousands of years. To discount the importance of their management and care of local landscapes is not just ignorant; it is harmful to the education and global understanding of how ecosystems work. If you have read a few of these letters, like this one, for instance, you would know that tapping into reciprocity has saved me from eco-grief and has revolutionised the way that I engage in environmentalism. In my opinion, embracing reciprocal relationships, whether they be with Country or with each other, needs to be taught as a foundational skill in both self-care and the care of our communities and natural world.

The thing is, the more I have centred reciprocity as my core value in my work and life, the more I have become a better villager. My village is made up of many people, from Lonely Conservationists to my family and friends, connections who reach out to me on LinkedIn, passive observers of my work, colleagues, and even people who live and work in my local area. Even you, dear Earth Carer, are in my village, and I am connecting with you right now through this very letter. My village is intentionally curated and is maintained with effort and love.

Focusing on being the best villager I can be has substantially improved my quality of life, career, and well-being. In fact, if I could give any Earth Carer just one piece of advice, it would be to hone in on your life as a villager, and have the connection with your communities underpin all projects, jobs, and aspirations that you embark on. This may seem crazy to some, to focus purely on your community connections, but I promise you that all aspects of your life, from your work to your social life, will be enhanced, supported, and eons more satisfying if you do.

So many facets of Western societies encourage us to prioritise individualism because it feeds our capitalist ways of being and doing. Not sharing resources means that everyone needs to purchase everything for themselves. We go to businesses and service providers to solve our problems rather than seeking help from neighbours, family and friends. Even if we want to tap into our communities, we are encouraged to do so through an app so that our data can be mined and we can be advertised to as we check in on our friends. Being a villager doesn’t align with these societal norms, and so nobody with any power will ever try to sell villagerhood to you. But, dear Earth Carer, that’s exactly why you should consider it for your ways of being and doing this year and beyond.

I have seen some discourse recently about how everyone wants to benefit from being a part of a village, but nobody really wants to show up as a villager, because let’s face it, navigating the different priorities of others, on the surface, seems to be more challenging than just powering through life alone. I know, I know, nobody wants to answer the phone anymore, let alone fumble their way through complex situations with others. Being a villager takes time to foster trust and meaningful relationships, time that many will claim they don’t have. It takes extending empathy and understanding to people with different upbringings, values, or life experiences from you. Being a villager requires sharing your resources, helping others out, contributing, and chipping in. Being a villager isn’t passive; you need to show up and put in the work, but don’t fret, dear Earth Carer, because reciprocity dictates that what you sew, you will also reap.

Lonely Conservationists is a great example of collective reciprocity in action, if I do say so myself. The platform has been sustainable to manage, even as I work a full-time job, as I don’t spend any time writing content for the platform, as all content is submitted by others. This has two primary benefits: firstly, there is a diversity of content sourced from unique voices around the world, and secondly, authors amplify the reach of the platform by sharing their published stories amongst their own communities. Over the seven-ish years that Lonely Conservationists has existed, I have not had to do much in the way of marketing or writing, as the community has done that for me. Many hands make light work, with each individual taking the time to write just one story and share it, which, amplified on a community scale, allowed new stories to be published weekly for the first three years of Lonely Conservationists’ existence. In the early days, the community grew exponentially without an overwhelming effort from any one person, and even now, the platform allows me increasing opportunities to present to and connect with new Earth Caring organisations every year.

This is not to say that I have not been working hard on Lonely Conservationists over the years, that would be disingenuous to imply. Where my time was not spent writing and marketing, it was spent talking with people all over the world, forming connections and relationships, researching and learning, and establishing other opportunities for the individuals in my community. Through the reciprocal relationships of my community, I was able to give individuals recognised and paid experiences in logo creation, authoring, illustrating, and editing published books, alongside opportunities to host events and webinars. The more that people contributed to the community, the more I was able to grow my resources and buy-in and provide even more opportunities for anyone who wanted to be involved. Everything down to the finances was community-sourced and distributed, making Lonely Conservationists utterly impossible to exist in its current form if it were a project that I worked on alone.

If we put our science hats on for a moment, this site, Earth Carer Care, is a great control to compare Lonely Conservationists to. On this platform, I write all the letters to you myself, I created the logo myself, and every part of this platform has been solely created by me. As a result, there is less buy-in from others, less sharing, fewer opportunities to grow related projects from it, and I need to put in 100% of the work myself. Though this platform does serve a purpose for me, if this were my only platform, I can say with certainty that it would not have given me many, if any, of the opportunities that Lonely Conservationists has. In fact, the main reason why I find these letters so satisfying to write is that they help me to further connect to the community that I built with Lonely Conservationists. If this platform came first, I would surely be writing into a void of nothingness instead of to you, my cherished Earth Carer.

In fact, Lonely Conservationists has been so successful in its community-first model that since I founded it, it has informed the way that I work in my sustainability-based day jobs. Since experiencing the overwhelming benefits of building meaningful, reciprocal relationships with my conservation community, I have been a passionate advocate in applying this ethos to every business and organisation that I work for. In fact, in one job, I mapped out every single community group in the entire area, from places of worship to sporting clubs, and met with as many community leaders as I could to see how I could solve their bespoke problems with sustainable solutions. In just 12 months, I increased environmental awareness of the region by 6% and reduced all contaminants from internal staff recycling bins whilst I was at it. The best part? The environmental efforts were championed by each community group, reducing the amount of work that my organisation had to do and increasing the longevity of the sustainable actions. Thus is the power of engaging in reciprocal, meaningful relationships with your community.

Many organisations, especially NGOs, take it for granted that there will be people wanting to volunteer with them, and so there is an embedded expectation of free labour. However, we must acknowledge that the duration of volunteer stints and willingness to volunteer have declined recently, especially as people need to bust their asses paying for the cost of living, with rarely a spare moment to spend time toiling away for free. The truth is, volunteering is the perfect opportunity for an organisation to engage in meaningful acts of reciprocity. Volunteers are giving up their time to gain something in return, whether it be career experience, community and socialisation, the feeling of contributing to a cause and being part of something meaningful, learning skills, or just getting out of the house. Whatever it is, volunteering is an exchange of labour for something in return. NGO’s often forget about their end of the reciprocal bargain, and this is where they are suffering to maintain long-term engagement.

If you are an organisation, or even trying to build your own community, I want you to consider two whys. The first why is why volunteering is necessary for your cause, and secondly, why should volunteers spend their precious time working with you? And my dear Earth Carer, their time is very much precious. When considering the first why, you may discover that you can engage your community in your cause without the need for volunteers at all. An alternative may be to supply community grants to enhance independent community efforts related to your cause, improving community spaces to encourage gathering, or, like Lonely Conservationists, you could provide opportunities for people to engage without a long-term commitment to your organisation.

When considering the second why, why volunteers should spend time assisting your cause, consider or even blatantly ask each volunteer what they are looking for in their time with you. If it is career experience, maybe you can offer specific upskilling, references, or introductions to industry contacts. If it is socialisation, you could focus on making tailored introductions to other members of the group and creating opportunities for enhanced communication and collaboration. At a bare minimum, many organisations fail to induct their volunteers properly or introduce them to the group in a way that makes newcomers feel welcome and at ease. A sense of belonging is a small act of care that goes a long way. Exploitation is way too common in conservation organisations, and being intentional about your reciprocal relationships is an easy way to ensure that your meaningful work is done by a valued and committed community with total buy-in to your cause.

So in our village, we now have many hands making light work, tailored and streamlined sustainable outcomes, and intentional contributions. But what about the individuals who reside in pockets of our village that lie outside of work? Don’t worry, we can cherish these villagers, too.

At the end of last year, I held a party for the first time since living in Melbourne. The party was around the time of my birthday, but really, I just wanted to celebrate the fact that I had created a wonderful village for myself over the past eight or so years of living here. I felt so grateful to have so many wonderful people in my life, as when I moved here, I knew not a single person aside from my husband, who travelled a lot for work. My foray into Melbourne life was pretty lonely, hence Lonely Conservationists, and to have such an incredible community surrounding me now felt worthy of celebration.

Knowing that not everyone at this party would know each other, I spent the months leading up to the event creating a trading card game from scratch as a social lubricant for the party guests. The cards featured characterisations of the party guests, complete with fun facts about them so that the party goers could learn something about eachother, serving as talking points. There were also action cards, where guests would have to complete activities upon trading the cards. The aim of the game was for each guest to trade cards throughout the night until they found their own card to keep as a memento. This could be done collaboratively, trying to help party goers to trade for their card, or competitively, trying to keep cards from those trying to find them. Though I had confused looks when explaining that I made an entire game for the party beforehand, during and after the party, the game received rave reviews, and I spent many weeks afterwards hearing about the connections that people had formed on the night.

The truth is, dear Earth Carer, to be a good villager, you don’t need to be inventing card games for every event; that was just a weird Jessie-ism specific to my breed of being a villager. In reality, the most gratifying way that I have connected with my village is to erase catch ups from my life. You see, catch-ups are what you do when you haven’t seen someone for a while, so you meet up to fill each other in on your lives before segregating yourselves from each other again until the next one. This means you aren’t actually living life together, but incrementally seeing eachother to tell the other person of the life you have lived without them. The most joy that I get out of being a villager is being there through the mundane parts of my co-villagers’ lives. Playing with my friend’s toddler so she can prepare dinner, or holding him after her surgery when she can’t. Watching a whole mini-series with someone and theorising what happens next between each episode, or helping someone to find the exact jacket they need for that fancy event they are invited to. I had a moment of euphoria last year from asking someone to walk with me after work, and just like that, we met at the park an hour later. In a world of pre-arranged hangs, it felt like I was back in high school, meeting a friend for a walk in a local park after school finished. In such a simple situation, my insides filled with joy and sparkles at the ease, nostalgia, and spontaneity of it all.

All of this to say, focusing on being a good villager has changed my life. If I didn’t care about the plights of humans, I would not have my amazing community of Lonely Conservationists, I would not have made the impact that I do at work in my sustainability roles, and I wouldn’t have such an incredible network of friends. Last year, I counted that I had around 36 knowledge sharing sessions with people from my village, whether they reached out through LinkedIn, they were a part of my LC community, or I knew them through my day job. Making time for people is the single best investment I make and will continue to make forevermore.

And with this, dear Earth Carer, I must say that I very much appreciate you being here and being a part of my village. It is a pleasure to have you, and to write to you when I do. I really hope that you can find small ways to find and nourish a village of your own, and that when you do, it starts to free you of that suffocating feeling you may experience from the normal ways of being and doing in the capitalist or individualistic society that you may find yourself in.

Cheers to you and your village, may you forever feel welcome and cherished.

Jessie