Safety benefits of befriending your neighbours.
While some families prefer living in guarded estates, complexes and gated communities, other people prefer to live in free standing houses and have their own space. If you are living in a free standing property, it is in your best interest for your own safety to start befriending your neighbours.
If you don’t know your neighbours from a bar of soap, it’s fair to wonder if their work consists of crunching numbers in an accounting firm or if they spend their days counting bullets as a potential hit man.
If you don’t know who your neighbours are, you also don’t know how helpful they could be in the case of an emergency.
Most of us know our neighbour’s cat or dog that strays into our garden better than we know the owner of the pet.
However, befriending your neighbours has a variety of benefits.
These benefits aren’t just borrowing a cup of sugar when you’re running low or looking after pets when away on holiday. There are also safety and security benefits of befriending those that live around you.
Safety benefits of befriending your neighbours:
- Having ease of mind knowing the company that surrounds you
- If you have an emergency, they will be more likely to help if you know each other versus being a stranger next door
- When it comes to community security, strength is greater in numbers
Picture this scenario. You’re at home watching TV with your family after dinner and you hear a scream outside in the distance.
Would you:
- Get up off of your comfy couch, open your door and security gate then proceed to walk outside to see if there was a commotion
- Casually bring up the fact that you heard a noise and shrug it off
Unless our life or the lives of the people we care about are at risk, most wouldn’t see the need to take any further action.
So, the key here is to care about our neighbours and in return, get our neighbours to care about us.
It’s all about being friendly and making the effort to be involved in each other’s lives for the greater benefit of the community. If you want your neighbours to care about your safety, you have to show them that you care about theirs first.
At this stage you might be asking yourself, “How can I get my neighbours to care about my safety as well as the safety of my family?”
The answer: You need to start by forming a friendship with your neighbours and community.
Don’t let the fact of living next to each other for years and never saying one word to each other dissuade you from befriending those around you.
It’s better late than never.
From a safety point of view, why do you think it would be a good idea to know your neighbours? We would love your feedback for a second post on this topic to spread helpful information about community safety.
Also, if you are already friends with your neighbours, how did you strike up the friendship with them?
Send your replies to siren@bluesecurity.co.za