How important is it to you to feel connected to others? 

According to psychological research, an absence of belonging can have negative and devastating effects on people, both physically and psychologically.

That’s something that Jeanette Langston, founder of the Vermont-based nonprofit Social Tinkering, knows personally and professionally. She founded the organization to combat social isolation through the creation of community and meaningful relationships. 

Social Tinkering recently engaged Living Proof Advocacy to explore how community members’ stories from lived experience could help advocate for stronger social connections, and we asked Jeanette about the experience and the organization’s work. 

Jeanette, what is Social Tinkering? 

We are a nonprofit that was formed in 2021. I initially came up with this concept because of my life experience with social isolation and loneliness, and recognizing how connection helped me thrive. I wanted to share that experience with the world, so I formed a team of people all of whom have lived experiences dealing with these issues. 

We focus on creating social experiences that increase awareness of isolation, loneliness and the power of connection, like our monthly Gather Together event. We also offer educational opportunities for interactive learning like the LPA workshop and we facilitate collaborative projects for regenerative solutions. 

How are stories from lived experience important to your work? 

They’re critical! Personal stories are centered in everything we do. Whether it’s our team or our partners and the people who work directly with populations that are impacted most by social isolation and loneliness, we want those with lived experience guiding the work. 

Decades of listening to people’s stories of frustrations and their ideas for change were really the impetus for starting Social Tinkering. People had lived experience but didn’t feel empowered or that they had the resources to use that experience to create change. 

Because we can create change. We actually can do things with these ideas and experiences that could create some really sustainable, amazing solutions—if we have a support system. When you have that support system, whether friendship or any other kind of relationship or community connection, you really can take those ideas and put them into action and thrive. 

How did you come to engage with Living Proof Advocacy? 

We found Living Proof Advocacy through LPA-certified coach Stacy Thrall. She was working on a project with folks near us here in Vermont and we were invited to an informational meeting that Stacy and LPA cofounder John Capecci were hosting.

I just really loved the LPA approach, because we were struggling with the fact that we have all these folks that want to guide this work with their lived experience, but there were gaps in the skill-building and training that we needed to tell our stories effectively. We didn’t really know where to find that training or even how to identify what that training might be. 

So, when I attended that meeting with Stacy and John, it was like, this is exactly what we need. We needed somebody to help teach us how to really effectively tell stories to create change. So I immediately reached out to Stacy and John and said “Hey, can you guys come down here, too?” Then we put out a call to the local community for participants to come to the LPA workshop.

What results have you seen from your experience with LPA? 

We’re already seeing that the folks that participated are feeling more empowered. We see it in the way they interact with each other, the way they are telling and crafting their stories. 

They continue working on their stories and come back to us saying, “I worked on this some more. Can I read it to you again?” They’ve been telling us how excited they are to have a chance to tell their story.

One of our folks had the opportunity to share his story at a public forum on peoples’ experience using housing resources, and how we can be more successful using those resources. The forum was recorded and it’s going to be produced for National Public Radio. 

He was so excited. He had been using the workshop to help him craft his story, and the forum hosts put him at the very end of the event, knowing he had a crafted story to tell. He worked really hard on it. 

After sharing his story, he received a standing ovation, this huge round of applause from everyone there who really felt the story and appreciated it. It just made him so happy to have that kind of success in the first space that he told his story. He’s so excited to take that and run with it, and do much more. 

What’s next for Social Tinkering? 

Working with Living Proof Advocacy was the launch of the next phase of our educational work. We are starting to build a network of changemakers, which we’ve been doing for the last two years, but we’re learning it’s very challenging for folks to sustainably engage in the work when they’re also dealing, regularly, with discrimination, inequities, accessibility issues and health issues, among other things. 

So what we’re trying to do is build this network of changemakers so folks can feel supported. Giving them a chance to talk to other people who might be doing similar work, and work together to find partnership and share resources. To essentially just feel less alone in the work, because so much of why we get burnt out or quit doing what we’re doing when we’re working to make change is just feeling like nobody cares. It’s just the general feeling of loneliness. 

But by creating this network of support, this connection between changemakers, we can help them hopefully sustain that energy. They can empower each other and learn together, so they’re not learning alone. So, the LPA workshops are really helping us launch this next phase of creating a network of changemakers.

For more about Social Tinkering, visit SocialTinkering.org.

To bring an LPA workshop to your community or organization, contact us.