the art of gathering: case studies on making community happen anywhere
if the space you need doesn’t exist...you just have to start it
Community doesn’t just happen rather I believe it’s built. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by necessity, but always by someone who decides to make the first move. Whether in a foreign country, a tiny town, or a moment of transition, the desire to connect is universal. But the people who actually make it happen? They’re the ones willing to start something before they know if anyone will show up.
This is about that. About what happens when you decide to create belonging instead of waiting for it.
Case 1: CHINA (The Babel Café)
A long, long time ago (6 years to be exact), in the land of China or the Middle Kingdom, the great ancient empire, the place where dumplings actually taste good, there was a broke university girl named Li Na. Or Nilah, if you wanted the Americanized version. She was in China for reasons (education? to “find herself”? divine mission? No one knew). But more than anything, she wanted to make friends.
Making friends, however, is hard. Do you just walk up to someone and say words? No. That’s terrifying. Do you lurk around campus waiting for fate to intervene? That’s sad. Do you force social interaction through a shared purpose so you don’t have to deal with the awkwardness of making friends as an adult? Yes.
And Nilah had a skill. Well, not a skill as much as an accident of birth: the ability to speak English. The sacred tongue of memes and a Kardashian valley girl accent. Everyone wanted to speak it. Chinese students, international students, even that one guy who had no intention of ever leaving his hometown but still wanted to flex on his classmates. Meanwhile, the foreigners on campus were floating around, bored of each other and wondering why their VPNs weren’t working.
So, like a visionary (or a desperate extrovert), Nilah put two and two together. She would bring them together, the English-thirsty locals and the foreigners who were bored of talking with other foreigners. She organized her first meetup. The excitement was palpable. The anticipation was real. The turnout was…nonexistent.
No one came. Not a single soul. She went home in the ashes of her shame and humiliation. Tragic and pathetic.
And then she tried again.
This time, three people showed up. Three! That was 300% growth. That was a movement. She was ecstatic. And that’s how it started. Small, awkward, and fueled by sheer willpower.
Soon, the group exploded. More people than she could handle. It turns out, when you create an oasis of English in the middle of China, people flock to you. But with great power (of English) comes great responsibility, and she needed help.
So she did what any overwhelmed girl in a foreign land does, she chucked up a prayer. A desperate, slightly whiny, "Hey God, if you’re listening, I could use some backup" kind of prayer.
And a week later, she met Shauna.
Shauna was from London, England. She was an English teacher. With an English accent. This was not just a native speaker. This was a woman who sounded like she personally knew the Queen (may she rest in peace). If you wanted pure, uncut, high-grade English, Shauna was it.
She was also twice Nilah’s age, but none of that mattered because they became best friends. A true intergenerational alliance. They ran the group together, threw chaotic cultural events, and turned language learning into some kind of social experiment. They had Christmas White Elephant exchanges (which confused everyone), Chinese-inspired Thanksgivings (which confused even more people), and impromptu vocabulary lessons that somehow involved dumplings.
People came from everywhere Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Indonesia, Russia (all US besties). Somehow, this little ragtag English club became the social melting pot of an entire university. And Nilah? She loved every second of it.
It was a strange, beautiful, unexpected season of life.
All because she had no money. And spoke English.
Case 2: MICHIGAN (Masterpieces, Meetups, and Missions)
Nilah wanted to throw an event. A big, meaningful, community-driven event. In her little college town. Population: five thousand. Middle-of-nowhere, Michigan. A place where the most exciting thing happening on a Friday night was a Walmart run. The event? An art show and fundraiser for her nonprofit, raising money for menstrual products for refugees in Lebanon.
The problem? She wasn’t in Michigan.
She was in California.
And she had one week to plan it.
Classic.
Nilah had no venue. No artists. No food. No concept of logistics. But she did have a small elite team: Greta, Madi, and Ed. Greta and Madi, her besties. Ed, a guy she met once at a startup event but seemed like an executer. That was it. That was the army. They had seven days to pull off an event in a town where the biggest cultural moment of the year was probably the local farmer’s market.
Nilah announced the event immediately. No venue? No problem. No artists? They’ll come. No details? TBD. Vibes-based planning. If she didn’t announce it now, it wouldn’t happen.
She flew in with four days to go. Still no venue. A minor inconvenience.
Three days left: Artists secured. Progress.
Two days left: Still no venue. Food became the next problem. No money, so she figured—fine. She’d cater it herself. Lebanese finger foods.
And then, with 48 hours to go, a breakthrough.
A cannabis shop for dogs…yes, for dogs, offered their space. For free. On the main road of town. A truly divine intervention. Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, Nilah got the weed dog store. Miracles, all the same.
The momentum picked up. More announcements. Reached out to the university to spread the word. But still lingering doubt. What if no one comes?
Flashbacks to China. The first meetup. No one showing up.
Day of the event: She spoke at the university church. One last announcement.
2 hours to go: The elite team assembled. Setup mode. Snacks and drinks. Local artists setting up. Musicians? Sure. A girl overheard what was happening and spontaneously donated decor to enhance the ambiance. Vibes were immaculate.
Then, people started coming.
And they kept coming.
The space was small. People were talking, laughing, connecting. The snacks? Excellent call. The live musicians? A little last-minute, but who cares? And then, the mayor walked in.
The. Mayor.
He took one look at the crowd, at the way this tiny event was overflowing into the streets, and did the unthinkable and shut down the street to accommodate the foot traffic.
A last-minute art show in a tiny Michigan town had turned into the event of the night.
$1,500 raised.
A guy found a job from someone he met at the event.
Another person met a friend, which led to them getting baptized.
A bachelor party crashed the show, which unclear how that happened, but we’re rolling with it.
It felt like the entire town showed up and not just to the event, but for the event.
And then, just like that at 1 am. It was over.
Nilah felt that familiar ache. That bittersweet, I never want these moments to end feeling.
Because that’s what she wanted. To create something out of nothing. To bring people together. And if she could do it here, in the middle of nowhere, Michigan?
Case 3: TURKEY
During the war, Nilah was forced to leave her then-home in Lebanon. So, she became a vagabond by trade. And no…not the romanticized kind, where you live in a van and journal about “the road.” No, this was the kind where you refresh your bank app and do deep breathing exercises.
At the time, she was in Berlin, which is a great city if you love techno, people who will publicly shame you for crossing the street before the light turns green, and debating whether €6 for a cup of coffee is a hate crime. Europe was eating through her savings faster than inflation, and just when she was about to accept her fate as a starving self-proclaimed intellectual.
Then, she called.
Let’s call her Dani in this story. Dani had never met Nilah. Not even a single DM exchange. But she had heard of her, through some vague professional pipeline of “women’s health in the Middle East/North Africa” people. Apparently, that was enough to warrant an invite, “Come to Turkey. Stay with me.”
What Dani didn’t know was that she had just extended a lifeline to a borderline-homeless vagabond who had been living off lentils and optimism.
Nilah, being a practical person, immediately booked a flight.
She landed in a tiny Turkish beach town that looked like God had designed it on an optimistic day. The mountains kissed the Mediterranean. The air smelled like citrus and saltwater. It was disgustingly beautiful. Nilah had seen a lot of places, but this? This was unfair.
Dani turned out to be a Shauna 2.0 moment, just another unexpected friendship in an unexpected country. But then Nilah, being the absolute menace she is, somehow convinced Dani to let another person stay with them. And here comes Andrew.
Dani, to her credit, rolled with it. She had, after all, declared her home a house of healing, which was lucky, because at the time, Nilah and Andrew were prime candidates for spiritual renovation.
The three of them fell into a rhythm. Co-working in the living room. Polar plunges in Dani’s pool, aka recreational suffering. Exercise routines they mostly ignored. Shopping in the local pazars and pretending they were not, in fact, freelancers running from responsibilities.
Then, one day, Dani mentioned an idea: an English cultural exchange group. Something she had been thinking about for months but never actually starting.
Cue Nilah and Andrew, the professional enablers. They bullied her into doing it. And in a month, their tiny idea took over an entire café.
The same magic from China was happening again. That feeling of belonging, of making something out of nothing.
Nilah felt it. And she thought:
If I can help create this wherever I go, I will.
Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve seen the same thing and that is people craving connection, waiting for someone else to make the first move. But belonging isn’t something you find and in my experience it’s something you create.
The formula is always the same: take a risk, put out the invitation, and trust that the right people will come.
Because the truth is, most people want to be part of something. They just need someone to start it.