Erin Ewart
She spent her career bringing people together. Then she began building community closer to home.
As founder of Careers for Social Impact, Erin Ewart professionally coaches people, builds communities, facilitates groups, and hosts events. By any objective measure, she's highly skilled at bringing people together.
Yet when the setting shifted from her professional role to her own neighborhood, she suddenly felt out of her element.
The realization surprised her. "I was constantly bringing people together in a professional sense," Erin said. "But in my neighborhood... it felt very, very different." Without the role she occupied at work, she found herself asking: Would people come? Would they see value in spending an afternoon getting to know their neighbors? And was she really the right person to bring them together?
There was, she realized, "a different level of vulnerability that comes with building community where you live.” The experience exposed a gap she hadn't expected. Not a gap in skills per se, but in identity.
The Welcome Committee gave her a community of people who were struggling with the same challenge. So as members shared their experiments, encouraged one another, and reported back on what they were learning, hosting a gathering began to feel less like something other people did, and more like something she could do herself.
Erin started small. Printed flyers. Created a QR code so neighbors could stay connected after the event. Then invited people to meet in the park next to her apartment building. That afternoon brought together about twenty-five neighbors, and more signed up to hear about future gatherings.
Afterwards, Erin launched a neighborhood WhatsApp group and began asking what should happen next. How could they create more gatherings, more regularly? How could they become more of a community? How could they move from hosting events to creating the conditions for neighbors to find belonging with one another?
Reflecting back, she is clear that her greatest challenge so far wasn’t in organizing an event. Professionally, that’s deeply familiar territory. But in-person events? With neighbors? That felt significantly different, and identifying herself as a community builder is an ongoing process.
One of the biggest challenges for people like Erin who want to build stronger connection in their communities is that it’s hard to do it all alone. Luckily, Erin’s shift in identity didn't happen in isolation – she had her cohort encouraging her and sharing their own challenges and victories. Seeing others in the Welcome Committee wrestle with the same doubts, share what they were learning, and encourage one another made it easier to imagine herself doing the same. "If I wasn't part of this group," she reflected, "I never would have put on an event like the one I did in my community."
Erin plans to continue building connection and community in her neighborhood through gatherings, and to stay connected with the Welcome Committee as it grows - especially her own cohort. Though she may never know the impact her community building work will bring, it’s clear she and her new friends have already helped each other do more than they thought they could.
The path to a more connected community rarely starts with a grand plan. More often, it begins with a simple invitation and the willingness to keep showing up. That's what the Welcome Committee is all about: giving people the support, ideas, and community they need to take that first step where they live.
